James Laughlin

James Laughlin was born in Pittsburgh in 1914. As a twenty-two year old sophomore at Harvard University he founded New Directions, which published some of the twentieth century’s greatest writers: Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Henry Miller, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and many others. As a champion of literature in translation, New Directions also published Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Nabokov, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz, among others. Laughlin was awarded honorary degrees from Colgate University, Hamilton College, Duquesne University, Cornell College, Yale University, and Brown University. He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, the PEN Publishers Citation, and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He died in 1997.