Before we turn the page on 2025, let’s pause to remember the authors we lost this year; their books are sure to live on. Here are just a few of the most notable:

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, 90. Incarcerated as a child with her Japanese American family during World War II, she co-wrote an influential memoir, Farewell to Manzanar, that has been a staple of high school and college syllabi since 1973.

Jules Feiffer, 95. The celebrated cartoonist illustrated the 1961 children’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth and published several of his own graphic novels for adults and children, including Kill My Mother and Amazing Grapes.

Tom Robbins, 92. Both countercultural and mainstream readers of the 1970s and ’80s embraced the offbeat comic novels of this writer, including Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life With Woodpecker.

Uri Shulevitz, 89. The Polish-born children’s author and illustrator, who survived a refugee childhood during World War II, won the Caldecott Medal in 1969. His books included The Treasure,  How I Learned Geography, and Chance: Escape From the Holocaust.

Joseph Wambaugh, 88. A former LAPD detective, Wambaugh found success as a writer of fiction and nonfiction about cops; his 1973 novel, The Onion Field, was made into a popular film starring John Savage and James Woods.

Marjorie Agosín, 69. The human rights activist and author, who was born in Maryland and raised in Chile, was known for her fiction, poetry, and children’s books written in Spanish, including I Lived on Butterfly Hill, winner of the Pura Belpré Award.

Mario Vargas Llosa, 89. The Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian novelist was one of the key literary figures of the Latin American Boom of the 1960s and ’70s, whose feud with Gabriel García Márquez made headlines. His books include The Time of the Hero, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, and Harsh Times.

Jane Gardam, 96. The witty English novelist won widespread acclaim late in life with her 2004 novel, Old Filth, the first in a trilogy about a retired judge, his wife, and his legal rival. Her other books include The Hollow Land and The Queen of the Tambourine.

Susan Brownmiller, 90. Published in 1975, the journalist and activist’s Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape is considered a landmark of feminist writing. Her other books include Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart and In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 87. The Kenyan author, who spent years in exile, was a passionate advocate for literature in African languages. He wrote many of his books first in Gikuyu, his native language, then translated them into English—among them Wizard of the Crow, Dreams in a Time of War, and Birth of a Dream Weaver.

Edmund White, 85. The groundbreaking LGBTQ+ writer chronicled the lives of gay men in numerous novels and memoirs, including Forgetting Elena, A Boy’s Own Story, City Boy, and The Loves of My Life, published less than four months before he died in June.

Jilly Cooper, 88. The English queen of the “bonkbuster”—a commercial novel with plenty of sexual content—ruled the bestseller lists with novels such as Riders and Rivals (published in the U.S. as Players).

Alice Wong, 51. The outspoken disability activist, who received a MacArthur Fellowship for her work, edited an anthology, Disability Visibility, and wrote a memoir, Year of the Tiger.

Sophie Kinsella, 55. The English author kept readers laughing with her series of Shopaholic novels. Her final book, published in the fall of 2024, was about a successful author who’d been diagnosed with brain cancer, like Kinsella herself.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.

Photo captions and credits from above: Bottom row, from left, Marjorie Agosín (photo by John Wiggins), Jane Gardam (Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images), Joseph Wambaugh (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images), Jules Feiffer (Bennett Raglin/WireImage), Susan Brownmiller (Mario Ruiz/Getty Images). Middle row, from left, Alice Wong (Eddie Hernandez Photography), Edmund White (David Corio/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images), Tom Robbins (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images), Mario Vargas Llosa (Quim Llenas/Cover/Getty Images), Jilly Cooper (Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Disney+), Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Massimiliano Donati/Awakening/Getty Images). Top: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)