Malcom Margolin, founder and longtime publisher of the Berkeley, Calif.–based independent press Heyday, died on August 20 from complications of Parkinson’s at a medical facility in Berkley. He was 84. Over his 41 years at the helm of Heyday, Margolin made a name for the press as a publisher of regional titles, including nature guides and books on social justice, history, and Native American studies.

Margolin founded Heyday in 1974 when he published two of his own books, East Bay Out: A Personal Guide to the East Bay Regional Parks and The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area. Both titles sold more than 100,000 copies within two years of publication.

Heyday would go on to become an award-winning publisher of nature books and field guides, which comprise about 50% of its list. Margolin rounded out Heyday’s niche with regional titles on social justice, history, and Native American studies. Among the press’s most popular titles are A Californian’s Guide to the Trees Among Us and Cityscape: San Francisco and Its Buildings.

Born in Boston in 1940, Margolin’s interest in nature began as a student at Harvard, where he took up hiking. After moving with his wife from New York City to Berkley in 1970, Margolin was surrounded by burgeoning Native American activism and became fascinated by the Indigenous history of the land. At the time, books on the subject had been only scantly published. After three years of research, Margolin published The Ohlone Way in 1978, inaugurating an array of writing by and about Indigenous people at Heyday, including Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2012), which is frequently taught in California schools.

Though Margolin, who was white, was at first criticized by some for co-opting Indigenous experiences, Heyday is now regarded as a pioneer in its commitment to giving a platform to Indigenous writers. The San Francisco Chronicle would later call The Ohlone Way “one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a Western writer.”

Founded at the start of the small-press movement, Heyday was at first surrounded by fellow indies, but Margolin watched his contemporaries—like Ten Speed Press, also founded in Berkeley in 1971 and now an imprint of Penguin Random House—get scooped up over the years by publishing conglomerates. Resolutely independent, Margolin registered Heyday as a nonprofit in 2001 to help ensure its long-term survival. “The kind of stuff I love to publish is never going to make any money,” he said in an interview with PW in 2014. “Money comes second.”

Margolin continued throughout his life to support regional authors. In 2001, he cofounded Bay Nature magazine with David Loeb and, in 2012, he established Heyday’s Berkeley Roundhouse program, which promotes the work of Indigenous Californian writers.

Margolin retired at the end of 2015, and was succeeded by current Heyday publisher Steve Wasserman. “It is with profound grief that we mark the end of this extraordinary man,” Wasserman said, “but we are summoned to continue the legacy he has left us—a profound commitment to celebrating the beauty and joy to be found in this broken world”

Upon his departure, Margolin said he felt “pride and amazement at the hundreds of books we’ve published, the communities we've nourished, and the wealth of ideas we've put forth.” In addition to a lifetime achievement award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, a community leadership award from the San Francisco Foundation, and other honors, Heyday recognized Margolin with its own lifetime achievement award in October 2024, at its 50th anniversary celebration.

“If he had twice this lifetime,” Heyday associate publisher Marthine Satris said, “I am sure his imagination would still have been too large for it.”