Today we pay tribute to Ralph Vicinanza, a literary agent and colleague whose clients included Stephen King, Augusten Burroughs and the Dalai Lama. Ralph passed away yesterday at the tender age of 60.
Vicinanza was in publishing for nearly 40 years and early on took a special interest in what he considered an undervalued field – international rights, working on overseas deals for King, Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan and Philip K. Dick, among others. Vicinanza founded his own agency in 1978 and signed up some of the world’s top science fiction and fantasy writers, including Terry Pratchett, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert and George R.R. Martin.