A children’s author, advertising maven and publisher whose magazines promoted Bermuda tourism on the world stage was “energetic, fearless and bold”.

A private memorial service for Roxana Kaufmann is to be held next month, her family said.

Ms Kaufmann was a publisher of Bermuda Cruise, a glossy magazine extolling Bermuda to cruise passengers headed for the island.

Predating it was Preview of Bermuda, a monthly guide, which she launched with friends and business partners Warren and Ann Brown in the late 1950s.

Ms Kaufmann managed the magazine, which boosted the island’s sightseeing and shopping attractions.

She also produced an annual guide aimed at cruise tourism.

Her advertising, marketing and publishing spanned decades, much of it in tourism, and she was one of the founders and a director of the Island Press, owner of the weekly Bermuda Sun newspaper.

In a sharply worded letter to The Royal Gazette upbraiding the then Department of Tourism over a marketing blunder, Ms Kaufmann explained her philosophy:

“To achieve excellence in marketing Bermuda, there has to be in place both short-term and long-term goals and a clear decisive plan to implement them.

“Fakery can never play in it.

“Three basic ingredients are required: integrity, intelligence and imagination. Add to that, knowledge and experience.”

Her relationship with cruise lines was sometimes delicate when it came to protecting their own fleet publications.

In 1994, Ms Kaufmann recalled the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce having to smooth a dispute over carrying her magazine.

“I remember once when the crew of this one ship were ordered to remove the cruise edition of Preview magazine, and they were literally thrown down the gangplank at Number Six Shed,” she said.

Her book Rainbow, illustrated by Dana Cooper and published in 1993, showed Bermuda scenes through a collection of stories.

Ms Kaufmann was inspired to write the book while taking an English Literature course at McGill University in Montreal at age 55.

“I told my own kids stories to keep them quiet and to entertain them in the days before TV,” she told the Gazette. “Now, I tell stories to my grandchildren.”

Known as Roxy, Ms Kaufmann “didn’t suffer fools gladly”, a family statement said.

“She was extremely well-read, and had a keen wit.”

Born in St Paul, capital of Minnesota, she was also raised partly in Palm Beach, Florida.

Her love of writing, poetry and theatre came while at a boarding school, Westover School, in Connecticut.

Visiting Bermuda with her parents, Elizabeth and Walter Schulke, at age 18, she met Yeaton Outerbridge, a founder of Outerbridge’s Original Sherry Peppers.

She moved to Bermuda after the couple married in 1947, and the couple had four sons: Alexander, Graeme, Douglas and Andrew.

In 1959, she was interviewing theatre personalities for Preview, and met the set designer John Hollis Kaufmann, whom she married.

The family moved to “Tranquillity” in Somerset, where two more children, Cecelia and Mark, were born.

She lived with her husband there for 62 years.

The couple also built a home in Colebrook, a small town in the Great North Woods Region of northern New Hampshire.

She remained at the helm of Preview until her retirement at 75. Donations in her memory can be made to the cancer charity Pals.

• Roxana Willard Kaufmann, author and publisher, was born on May 15, 1928. She died on June 5, 2022, aged 94.