Phyllis E. Grann

Phyllis E. Grann (born September 2, 1937) is a former book editor and publishing executive. She was the first female CEO of a major publishing firm, Penguin Putnam, and one of the most commercially successful publishers in recent history. She was a long-time editor for Knopf Doubleday, and a former CEO of the Putnam Berkley Group and was also CEO of Penguin Putnam. Grann was responsible for publishing many notable and bestselling authors at Penguin including A. Scott Berg, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Daniel Silva, and Kurt Vonnegut. At Doubleday Grann acquired and edited Jeffrey Toobin, Tina Brown, Bob Herbert, Ayelet Waldman and Tim Weiner. Her mother was British and her father was a Russian Jew who had immigrated to Paris. “My mother used to take me to Scribner’s and would leave me with the saleslady in the children’s department,” she said. “I must have been 10 or 11. She’d just leave me sitting there and reading while she went shopping for an hour. It was quite a feeling, to be surrounded by books like that.”

Unhappy at Simon & Schuster, Grann moved over to Putnam in 1976 to become editor-in-chief. According to Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda, "her dazzling success as both and editor and a businesswoman was to serve as a permanent reminder to Dick (Snyder) that he had lost one of the brightest stars in publishing and made her a competitor."

Grann retired from Knopf Doubleday in 2011. and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Her husband is an oncologist and the Director of the Bennett Cancer Center in Stamford, Connecticut. They have three children--David Grann (writer), Edward Grann (filmmaker) and Alison Grann (radiation oncologist).