Chuck Adams, the longtime editor who gave up career in law for one in publishing, died on October 6. He was 82.
After receiving his bachelor’s and law degrees from Duke University, Adams worked briefly in New York as a lawyer before taking an entry-level job at Holt, Rinehart and Winston. His first jobs at Holt and later Macmillan focused on the production and the business side of publishing.
When he moved to Dell, Adams became more involved with editorial, and in 1989 he was hired as senior editor at Simon & Schuster. Among the authors he worked with at S&S were Joseph Heller, Mary Higgins Clark, James Lee Burke, Clive Cussler, Sandra Brown, and Jackie Collins.
In 2004, Adams moved to Algonquin Books where he made perhaps his signature acquisition, Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, which went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. In a 2007 interview with PW, Adams, a native of North Carolina, remembered his move to the then Chapel Hill–based Algonquin. "It was quite simple," Adams said. "I was fired [by S&S], and I wasn’t ready to retire." (Algonquin was acquired by Workman Publishing in 1989, and Workman was later bought by Hachette Book Group.)
In recognition of his contributions to acquiring and promoting literary prose, Adams was presented with Poets & Writers’ Editor’s Award in 2013. He was equally adept at knowing what readers were looking for, a skill that produced nearly 100 New York Times bestsellers including, at Algonquin, Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage, Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife, Jonathan Evison’s West of Here, and Tab Hunter’s autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential. Adams stayed at Algonquin before retiring in 2021.
Adams’ colleagues remembered him as always willing to talk to anyone about writing, and for years he conducted regular small workshops out of his home to bolster the confidence of writers and teach them the basics for just $20 a session. He mentored interns well after their internships, and he was one of the earliest to call out the lack of diversity in publishing.
Adams was preceded in death by his longtime husband Bob Donaghey, who was his partner for over 50 years.
