Douglas L. Merwin

A memorial service for Doug Merwin will be held at 2:00 p.m. Friday, June 16, 2023, at Jones, Rich & Barnes Funeral Home, 199 Woodford Street, Portland, Maine, 04103. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Doug’s memory to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Doug was 84 when he died on June 12. The son of Presbyterian missionaries Wallace C. Merwin and Signe Stenberg Merwin, Doug was born in Beijing, China, the fifth of five brothers and sisters, and spent the first decade of his life in pre-Communist China. His family returned to the U.S. following the 1949 revolution and settled in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Doug later lived and raised his own family in White Plains, New York, before moving to Portland, Maine, in 2006.

Doug was a graduate of Columbia University, where he also earned a master’s degree in Chinese and Korean languages and literature and completed doctoral work in the same field. Doug spent a career editing and publishing books, primarily on China, Taiwan, Japan, and the Koreas, for M.E. Sharpe Publishing, where he was the founding editor of the East Gate Books imprint. His notable projects included a comprehensive translation of the writings of Mao Zedong and translations of novels by prominent South Korean author Lee Ho-Chul and Nobel-prize winning Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe. In 2008, Doug founded Merwin Asia, an independent publisher of books on East Asia.

Doug was an avid squash player who enjoyed spending free time hiking, reading, listening to music, watching Westerns, and going for long drives with a strong cup of black coffee.

Doug was married for 27 years to the late Jean Chu Merwin, and they raised three children who survive him, Christine Endicott, Nancy Merwin, and David “Xiao-hu” Merwin; along with his sons-in-law, Ross Endicott and Phil Hirschkorn; his six grandchildren, who affectionately knew him as “Dougie” or “gong-gong” (grandpa in Chinese), Beo and Maia Endicott, Lucinda and Hana Hirschkorn, Miles and Dean Merwin; and two brothers, Paul and Dave Merwin. His brother Don Merwin and sister Alma Goecker predeceased him.