Knox Burger, Literary Agent, Dies

January 13, 2010 By: Marshall Cutchin

Knox Burger’s only public connection to fly fishing was an important one: he was John Gierach’s first agent and helped the now-popular writer break into New York publishing. He also edited some of John McDonald’s classic Travis McGee novels.
But Burger, according to The New York Times‘s Bruce Weber, was more passionate about fly fishing than almost anything else in his life: “In 1970 he established a literary agency, Knox Burger & Associates, with his wife, Kitty, whose clients, in addition to Mr. Smith, included the mystery writers Donald E. Westlake and Lawrence Block, the novelist Donald McCaig, the police detective-turned-crime-writer William J. Caunitz and the fishing writer John Gierach. Mr. Burger himself was such a dedicated fly fisherman that his ashes are to be buried in a creel.”