Ann Godoff founded Penguin Press in 2003 and was President and Editor-in-Chief until her death in 2026. She had a distinguished and singular career in book publishing, editing and publishing many award-winning and bestselling works of fiction and nonfiction. She first joined the editorial department of Simon & Schuster in 1980, and in 1987 became Senior Editor at Atlantic Monthly Press; in two years she became Editor-in-Chief. In 1991, Ms. Godoff was appointed Executive Editor at Random House, where she would eventually be named Vice President and Editorial Director. In 1997 she became President, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the Random House Trade Publishing Group and Executive Vice President of Random House, Inc. Among the authors and books she edited were John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, Michael Pollan, Ron Chernow, Zadie Smith, Mary Oliver, Ocean Vuong, Thomas Pynchon, and Steve Coll. She lived the credo of her beloved author Mary Oliver: “to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”