Alan J. Hruska, a corporate litigation attorney who had a second, wide-ranging career as founder of independent publishing house Soho Press, which invests in serious fiction by unsung authors; as a novelist; and as a writer, director, and producer of plays and films, died on March 29 at his Manhattan home. He was 88.
The cause was lymphoma, said his daughter, Bronwen Hruska, the publisher of Soho Press.
Even before Mr. Hruska retired from his day job at Cravath Swaine & Moore in New York in 2001, after four decades there, he published his first novel, in 1985. The following year, with his wife, Laura Chapman Hruska, and Juris Jurjevics, a former editor-in-chief of Dial Press, he founded Soho Press.
Soho Press made a name for itself by welcoming unsolicited manuscripts from little-known authors. The ambitions, said Mr. Jurjevics, were to “have no particular growth rate per year and not be bought by anyone”.
Manhattan-based Soho Press specializes in literary fiction and memoir with a backlist of books by Jake Arnott, Edwidge Danticat, John L’Heureux, Delores Phillips, Sue Townsend, and Jacqueline Winspear. The company also has a Soho Teen imprint for young adults and a Soho Crime imprint that publishes mysteries in exotic locations by the likes of Cara Black, Colin Cotterill, Peter Lovesey and Stuart Neville.
Mr. Hruska (pronounced RUH-ska) often said that there is less distance between lawyers and literature than there seemed at first sight. Both, successfully done, he said, are about storytelling, whether it’s advocating a case in a legal letter or writing a novel, script or screenplay.
“I was a trial attorney, and while I would expect my actors to remember their lines better than my witnesses, there’s less difference between the two professions than might be thought,” he said in a 2017 interview with a blogger.
“A pilot and a play are both productions,” he added. “When you bring them all together, you have to tell a story. This also applies to writing a briefing or making an oral argument for a jury. If you don’t tell a story, you’ll probably put them to sleep.”
Alan Jay Hruska was born on July 9, 1933 in the Bronx and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens. His father, Harry Hruska, was in the textile industry. His mother, Julia (Schwarz) Hruska, was a housewife.
While hesitating about a profession, Alan had a penchant for filmmaking that started at the age of 8. As a child, he took the subway to Manhattan to attend double feature films in the first movie theaters.
After graduating from Lawrence High School on Long Island, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale in 1955 and was persuaded to apply to Yale Law School by a college professor who was impressed with his logic skills. and rationalization. He, in turn, found the law an ideal vehicle for his writing and reasoning.
He graduated from law school in 1958, the same year he married Laura Mae Chapman, one of three women in their law school class.
She died in 2010. In addition to their daughter, he leaves behind two sons, Andrew and Matthew; his wife, Julie Iovine, a former reporter for DailyExpertNews and The Wall Street Journal, whom he married in 2013; and six grandchildren.
Mr. Hruska borrowed from his trial experience in major cases in writing a number of his novels, including ‘Wrong Man Running’ (2011); “Pardon the Ravens” (2015); “It Happened at Two in the Morning” (2017), which The Wall Street Journal said the author is “at his best at writing thrillers”; and “The Inglorious Arts” (2019).
He also wrote and directed the film “Nola”, a romantic comedy starring Emmy Rossum, which opened at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival.
His other films include “The Warrior Class,” a comedy about a budding lawyer that premiered at the 2005 Hamptons International Film Festival; and ‘The Man on Her Mind’, an existential comedy based on his play of the same name, which premiered at London’s Charing Cross Theater in 2012.
He made his theater debut directing an Off Broadway revival of “Waiting for Godot” in 2005. Ten years later, when a surreal play of his about love, marriage and an approaching hurricane opened, critic Alexis Soloski wrote in The Times. in 2015, “If an existentialist philosopher has ever tried a light romantic comedy, it might sound a bit like ‘Laugh It Up, Stare It Down,’ Alan Hruska’s quintessentially absurdist play at the Cherry Lane Theater.”
Mr. Hruska oversaw a wide range of civil lawsuits at Cravath in the 44 years before retiring in 2001. He was appointed senior counsel in 2002. He was also secretary of the New York City Bar Association.
When asked by The American Lawyer in 2015 if he ever felt the law wasn’t his true calling, he replied, “Not at all. I had a great experience. I’ve done about 400 cases, won 200 and settled 200. I am especially proud of the settlements because they can put people in a much better position than winning a case.”