Knox Breckenridge Burger (November 1, 1922 – January 4, 2010) was an editor, writer, and literary agent. He publishedKurt Vonnegut's first short story and with his wife he founded Knox Burger & Associates, a literary agency.[1]
Burger was born inNew York City and lived in early life inWestchester County. Carl Burger, his father, was an illustrator.[1]
While serving in World War II, Burger contributed toYank, the Army weekly 1943–1944. In aB-29 bomb squadron in theMarianas, Burger covered a number of missions over Japan, and was transferred to theYank Saipan bureau late summer 1945 just before the Japanese surrender. Burger moved north to Tokyo, where he was, for a few months, the editor of the Far East edition ofYank, and wrote numerous stories about the occupation.[1]
Burger, like his father, the author and illustratorCarl Burger, graduated fromCornell University.[1]
After the war, Burger worked as the fiction editor ofCollier's from 1948 to 1951, where in 1950 he acceptedKurt Vonnegut's first published short story, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”. He then moved on to editing forDell from 1951 to 1960 andFawcett Publications in 1960, joining the latter's Gold Medal line, where he worked on the release ofJohn D. MacDonald's first threeTravis McGee novels. In 1970, in partnership with his wife Kitty Sprague he founded Knox Burger and Associates, a literary agency which in 2000 merged with theHarold Ober agency.[1][2]
Burger worked with writers includingAndrew Bergman,[3]Max Allan Collins,[4]John Wyndham,[5] Kurt Vonnegut, John D. MacDonald,John Steinbeck,Ray Bradbury,Lawrence Block,Jack Finney,Horace McCoy,Walter Tevis,MacKinlay Kantor,Morris West,Donald McCaig,Donald Westlake,William Caunitz,Martin Cruz Smith, andLouis L'Amour. In 1980 he sold Cruz Smith's "Gorky Park" toRandom House for $1 million.[1]
In 2000, Knox Burger donated his archive to theFales Library ofNew York University.[2]