Liz Perle, writer, died at 59

  Dead Famous

Dead, Liz Perle, died August 20, 2015 of breast cancer, she was a writer and former publishing executive who co-founded Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping families navigate the complex worlds of entertainment, media and technology, died on Thursday at her home in San Francisco. She was 59.

The cause was breast cancer, her husband, Steven Pressman, said.

Ms. Perle (pronounced PEARL-ee) had worked in publishing and written a memoir about women’s finances when she and Jim Steyer, a lawyer and children’s advocate, formed Common Sense Media in San Francisco in 2002. She became its editor in chief.

Common Sense provides reviews and curriculums to help parents and teachers find appropriate content and shows children how to engage with the digital world responsibly.

“One of the things we do at Common Sense is teach our kids to see because we can’t cover their eyes,” Ms. Perle told Michele Norris on the NPR news program “All Things Considered” in 2009.

Ms. Perle had earlier held executive positions at Times Books, Bantam Books, Prentice Hall and Addison-Wesley in New York, but she gave up the work in the 1990s to move with her first husband, Steven McKenna, to Singapore, where he had been hired for a job.

Their marriage ended soon afterward, and Ms. Perle moved to San Francisco in 1998. Even though she had been an executive for years, she found herself in dire financial circumstances.

“A surprise divorce landed me on a friend’s couch with a 4-year-old and a few hundred bucks, and a wake-up call,” Ms. Perle told the television business journalist Maria Bartiromo on CNBC in 2006.

American writer, Liz Perle died on August 20, 2015 of breast cancer at age 59.