W.L. Lyons Brown Library
Thomas Merton Center
Bellarmine University
Abbot Damien Thompson, from the Abbey of Gethsemani, has announced the following changes in the makeup of the Thomas Merton Legacy Trust.
Robert Giroux has resigned his position as an active member of the three-person Board of Trustees to become a Trustee Emeritus and a Consultant to the Trust.
Peggy L. Fox will assume the role of the third Trustee, joining Thomasine O’Callaghan and Anne McCormick who remain. Ms.Fox is currently President and Publisher of New Directions Publishing Corporation, the legendary avant-garde firm founded by James Laughlin, Thomas Merton’s friend, the publisher of his poetry, and one of the original Trustees of the Thomas Merton Legacy Trust. Ms.Fox, who came to New Directions in 1975, was previously Senior Editor as well as Director of Foreign Rights and Manager of Contracts and Copyrights.She became Vice-President in 1992 and has been handling the day-to-day operations of the press since that time, becoming President and Publisher in 2004.
From a Lutheran family, Ms.Fox was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but grew up near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A National Merit Scholar, she earned a B.A. in English at Ohio’s Wittenberg University and an M.A. in English at the University of Pennsylvania. She was teaching part-time at Brooklyn College while finishing her dissertation when a summer job at New Directions changed her career plans. She now lives in Piermont, NY with her husband Ian MacNiven (Professor Emeritus of Humanities, SUNY/Maritime College) who is writing the authorized biography of James Laughlin.
January 24, 2008
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