Larry Ashmead

Who was Larry Ashmead?

Lawrence Peel "Larry" Ashmead was an American book editor who helped create 100 books a year featuring such authors as Isaac Asimov, Quentin Crisp, Tony Hillerman, Susan Isaacs and Michael Korda at a string of publishers including Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, Lippincott, Harper & Row and its successor HarperCollins.

Ashmead was born on July 4, 1932, in Rochester, New York. He later recalled having been a model for a Kodak photo and then seeing an enlargement of his picture blown up to billboard size when visiting Grand Central Terminal and assumed that they did that for all visitors. When he was nine years old he heard a writer speak at a local library and was less fascinated by the author's writing than by the fact that he worked amid the skyscrapers of Manhattan editing books. He attended the University of Rochester and left after two years to serve in the United States Army. After completing his military service, he studied for a doctorate in geology from Yale University as part of a program where the cost of his education was covered by an oil company. He did not complete his Ph.D, and though he was expected to work for the company after completing his education, he decided to abandon the field, making what he called the "only bold decision of my life".