NEW YORK (AP) — Ann Godoff, a leading book publisher for more than 30 years with an eye for timely and timeless works from “Alexander Hamilton” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” to current bestsellers by Gisele Pelicot and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, has died. She was 76.

Godoff died of cancer Tuesday in Albany, New York, according to a statement from Penguin Press, which she had founded in 2003.

“Ann’s impact on American book culture over the past four decades is incalculable,” Penguin Press publisher Scott Moyers said in a statement. “An editor of immense range in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, Ann shepherded into print innumerable New York Times bestsellers, multiple winners of every major award, and works that have appeared on all manner of best books lists — of the year, the decade, and the century.”

A onetime NYU film student who studied under then-faculty member Martin Scorsese, sold cars and assisted on Dr. Joyce Brothers’ television show, Godoff was a late bloomer who didn’t begin her publishing career until her early 30s and soon revealed uncommon gifts for spotting and cultivating talent. As a rising editor at Random House in the 1990s, she published such debut phenomena as John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and Caleb Carr’s “The Alienist.”

She also worked with Salman Rushdie, E.L. Doctorow and Arundhati Roy and had lasting relationships with Michael Pollan and Ron Chernow, whose books with Godoff have included a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George Washington and the Hamilton biography that was the basis for the prize-winning stage musical.

Godoff was eventually promoted to president and editor in chief of Random House, and her stature was so high that when she was forced out in 2003 amid corporate restructuring, her departure set off debates — evergreen in the industry — over the feared decline of literary publishing.