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Naomi Pascal was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 13, 1926. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Wellesley College in 1946 where she was named a Durant Scholar and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She worked as an editor at Vanguard Press in New York City, New York from 1946-1948 and at the University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill, North Carolina between 1948 to 1950 and between 1952 and 1953 before moving to Seattle. She joined the University of Washington Press in Seattle, Washington as an editor (1953-1975), as Editor-in-Chief (1976-1993), and as the Associate Director and Editor-in-Chief from 1993 to her retirement in 2002. After her retirement in 2002, the UW Press Editor's Endowment was renamed the Naomi B. Pascal Editor's Endowment. This endowment provides a fund for the editor-in-chief to use at his or her discretion in support of deserving projects. She continued as part-time Editor-at-Large until 2007. She died on December 5, 2014, at the age of 88. Her husband, Paul Pascal, was an Emeritus Classics Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle and died on May 11, 2015.

At the University of Washington Press, Pascal worked with a number of authors including Nobel Prize winners Julian Huxley, Fred Hoyle, and Francis Crick. She acquired and edited hundreds of influential books, especially in Native American art and culture, Asian American studies, Jewish studies, and architecture. Influential titles include "Northwest Coast Indian Art" by Bill Holm, "Market Sketchbook" by Victor Steinbrueck, "Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory" by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, and "Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture" by Gary Okihiro.

Pascal was active in the scholarly publishing community and served as a member of the Board of Directors from 1976-1978 and on numerous committees of the Association of American University Presses. She frequently delivered papers and talks at meetings. She became the first recipient of the Association's Constituency Award in 1991 for "her outstanding contribution to scholarly publishing." Pascal was a founding editor of the journal "Scholarly Publishing" and an active contributor. She also contributed articles on various aspects of publishing to journals such as "Publishing Research Quarterly" and "Drexel Library Quarterly." Her popular publication "Borrowed Images" presents her creative and humorous interpretations of works of art related to scholarly publishing. It looks at "people and processes of scholarly publishing in artistic procession."

Pascal served several times on review panels for the publishing program and the challenge grant program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1980, 1983, 1985, 1989) and on juries for the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference (1980), the Society for Technical Communication (1988-1989), the Written Arts Program of the King County Arts Commission (1992), and the Nancy Blankenship Pryor Award of the Washington Commission for the Humanities and the Washington State Library (1993). She was also a delegate to the Washington State Governor's Conference on Library and Information Services from 1978-1979. In August 1991, Pascal conducted a UNESCO-sponsored seminar for Chinese university press editors at Northeast Normal University in Changchun, Jilin Province, People's Republic of China. The University of Washington Press was awarded the Nancy Blankenship Pryor Award in 1995. Pascal herself was awarded the Native American Art Studies Association's Lifetime Achievement Honor Award in 2007.

Source: Columns Magazine, UW