Judy Corman, 65, Publicist at Scholastic
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Judy Corman, the wife of best-selling author Avery Corman and the beloved head publicist for Scholastic Inc., which releases the Harry Potter novels in the United States, has died of cancer. She was 65.
Corman died Monday at her home in Manhattan after a brief illness, Scholastic said.
“She was so strong and had such a strong spirit, I never thought she would lose a battle with anything,” Dick Robinson, chairman, president, and CEO of Scholastic, told the Associated Press on Monday.
Corman, whose warm, querulous voice sounded more than a little like Mike Myers’s Linda Richman character from “Saturday Night Live,” was the main contact for reporters eager for news about the Potter phenomenon.
Hers was an overwhelming task she handled with sympathy, occasional bewilderment, and an endearing reluctance to craft clever sound bites.
“She was very straight and very real and very, very smart,” Mr. Robinson said. “If she didn’t know something, she told you. She didn’t throw words around.”
A native of Brooklyn, Corman began her long career in the entertainment industry in the 1960s when she worked as a publicist with Epic Records. Her clients included Elvis, Miles Davis, Jefferson Airplane, John Denver, and Willie Nelson. She also served as public relations director for Phoenix House, the drug abuse treatment agency, and worked on several accounts for the communications firm Robinson, Lerer & Montgomery.
Corman joined Scholastic in 1999 as senior vice president of corporate communications. Two years later, she received a New York Women in Communications Matrix Award in Public Relations, presented by writer-director Nora Ephron, a longtime friend.
Survivors include Corman’s parents, Roslyn and Bennie Lishinsky, and her husband, best known as the author of “Kramer vs. Kramer,” which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Corman is also survived by two sons, Matthew and Nicholas.