Literary agent Edite Kroll, known for her passion for mentoring and supporting authors, and her keen eye for talent, died at her home in Maine following a long illness. She was 87.

Kroll was born in Blasheim, Germany, in 1939 and was educated in Germany, France, and England. In the early 1960s, she was working in foreign and subsidiary rights and editing children’s books at London publisher Chatto & Windus, which was then home to revered authors and editors Leonard Woolf and Cecil Day-Lewis. It was at there that she met American editor and eventual children’s book author Steven Kroll, whom she married in 1964. (The couple later divorced.)

The Krolls relocated to New York City in 1965 and Edite landed a position as associate children’s book editor at Knopf. She then transitioned to the same role at Holt, Rinehart and Winston, before she and her husband both left Holt and moved to Maine, where Edite embarked on a freelance editorial career that included translating German children’s books into English.

By 1973, back in New York, Kroll joined publishing house M. Evans as a children’s book editor. The following year she moved to Harper Junior Books as associate children’s book editor, and in 1976 she was appointed executive assistant to Charlotte Zolotow, then associate publisher of the division. Kroll later represented Zolotow and her daughter Crescent Dragonwagon as author clients for many years.

After Kroll left Harper, she was hired by the Hanes Corporation of Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1978 to help launch the Hanes Starbooks publishing program, marketing affordable children’s books in grocery stores. Kroll acquired the rights to more than 200 curated titles from enthusiastic publishers for the rollout, but the program was scrapped in 1981 after a one-year test-market phase, a decision believed to be the result of another conglomerate’s takeover of Hanes in 1979.

Though the Starbooks program didn’t move forward, it was the catalyst for Kroll finding a new path for her life. She met her partner Keith Walker in North Carolina in 1980, and she decided that her professional experience and connection to numerous authors and illustrators would put her in good stead to open her own literary agency. Walker encouraged Kroll in this endeavor and the couple relocated to New York City and launched the Edite Kroll Literary Agency from their apartment’s dining table.

In 1989, Kroll moved to Maine but routinely returned to New York and maintained her publishing relationships there. She especially enjoyed traveling to the Bologna and Frankfurt book fairs, where she was able to meet in-person with the many co-agents and foreign publishers with whom she established close ties.

Among the notable children’s book creators on her client list were Sandra Boynton, M.B. Goffstein, Geoffrey Hayes, Amy Herrick, Kate Klimo, Yolanda Nave, Shel Silverstein, and Charlotte Zolotow, as well as such pioneering feminist writers as psychotherapist Charlotte Kasl, Moroccan feminist scholar Fatema Mernissi, and activist Robin Morgan.

Kroll was an involved presence in her local writing and publishing communities, whether she was organizing the Harper & Row Women’s Group that sponsored networking events for women in publishing in the 1970s, or serving as a board member of the Maine Publishers and Writers Alliance, where she presented a workshop as recently as January 2025. Kroll also helped launch the careers of such Maine-based children’s authors as Charlotte Agell, Gail Donovan, and Maria Padian.

In 2018, Kroll made the decision to step back, and transferred her active children’s book clients to Victoria Wells at HG Literary, and in 2024 Kroll closed her agency, transferring her remaining estate clients to Wells. According to Wells, Kroll remained engaged in agenting work to the end, and the two conferred about contracts and offers just days prior to Kroll’s death.

“Edite was a dear friend, colleague, mentor, and inspiration,” Wells said. “She never stopped working, and caring, even when she retired, and she was a source of wit and wisdom at every turn. So many friends have reached out because indeed, Edite was a friend to so many writers, editors, and other agents around the world. Always ready with a glass of wine and a good story, her legacy will live on in the hundreds of books she not only helped bring into the world, but those she fought to keep in print decades later.”

Maine-based children’s book author Charlotte Agell recalled how in the early days of her career she came to be represented by Kroll following a fateful bus ride. “I got on a bus and my kids sat in front of me, leaving the aisle seat open,” Agell said. “Then... magic happened. A dynamic woman with the coolest shoes and tricolored hair sat down next to me. She had extremely strong opinions yet was also very easy to talk to—a rare combination. She was Shel Silverstein’s international rights agent, but she was also interested in my work, which she’d seen in a local art show. Before I got off the bus, I had an agent! I also had a lifelong friend. Edite was an organizing principle in my life as an author/illustrator. She pushed me, she praised me, she scolded me, and she kept me going. I will feel her presence in my life, always.”

And author Crescent Dragonwagon, a client for more than 40 years, reminisced about Kroll’s memorable working style. “She was able to really see her clients holistically. When I was in my late 20s and interviewing agents, Edite came down to the little Ozark village of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and stayed for a week, going through all my files with me and looking at everything I’d published. Not everybody is willing to do something like that. Some authors change agents, but once I had Edite, I stayed put, and I cried when she retired.

“Another time she came to see me was when I was going through my mother Charlotte Zolotow’s [author, editor, and fellow Kroll client] papers after she died. We were sitting in my mother’s office, and I came across this file that has in big letters on it: ‘Destroy on my death. Private. Do not look at this.’ I held it up to Edite, and she and I looked at each other, and Edite said, ‘She wanted us to read it.’ And I said, ‘Yes, she did!’ She was asking for it, really.

“All of Edite’s clients felt like she encouraged us, she understood us; she took no BS from us. A lot of us feel like there was something about her that seemed immortal. It’s hard to believe that there’s a world without her, and it makes me really sad. She was an absolutely lovely person in a hard, crusty, spiky package, and that’s just an irresistible mix.”

This article has been updated with additional tributes.