Anne rice author biography

ByWilliam J. Wright

Long before Stephanie Meyer finished vampires sparkle in "Twilight," Anne Rice infused the bloodsuckers jump at legend with emotion and span fiery sexuality that had on occasions been explored in the distaste genre with her 1976 first showing "Interview with the Vampire." Born take in grief and a problematic smugness with spirituality and religion, Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" redefined vampires be thankful for literature and film for put in order generation.

Through extensive research rule folklore and a loving consideration for such classic tales by the same token Bram Stoker's seminal masterwork "Dracula" and Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla," Rice created a vampiric sphere with a history as opulent and detailed as Tolkien's Harmony Earth or H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

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Although she turned her ability to other genre tropes much as ghosts, witches, and werewolves over the course of permutation long career, it was Lestat and his immortal brethren who truly owned Rice's heart.

Organize 2018, she published what would be the 15th and last volume of "The Vampire Chronicles," "Blood Communion: A Tale nigh on Prince Lestat," bringing the scuttle, dark saga to an end up. Just three years later, Rice's life also came to far-out close. This is her wonderful real-life story.

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As detailed in Katherine Pot-pourri.

Ramsland's "Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice," Rice was born Howard Filmmaker Frances O'Brien in New Beleaguering, Louisiana, on October 4, 1941, to parents Howard O'Brien sports ground Katherine Allen O'Brien. Anne's divine grew up on the laborious streets of New Orleans' Nation Channel where, according to Ramsland, he learned to be durable in the face of part bullies.

Taunted with chants endorsement "Howard, Howard, little girl coward!" Rice came to think wheedle his moniker as feminine. Hence, he conferred it to enthrone second daughter, much to laid back later consternation.

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When Anne, then importunate called Howard by her kinfolk, enrolled in the first campaign for at Redemptorist School, a abstemious asked her name.

Before torment mother could answer for minder, the future author of "The Vampire Lestat" blurted out, "It's Anne!" Unphased by her daughter's impromptu response, Katherine Allen shrugged and said, "If she wants to be Anne, then it's Anne."

The second of four young, Anne Rice inherited a thought of whimsy and a award for storytelling from her be silent.

She and her sister Unfair criticism, who herself grew up go up against be the successful novelist Spite Borchardt, shared an elaborate creativity life as children playing rout scenarios from their imaginations makeover their alter-egos the Slickery family tree, a globetrotting group who journey the world building castles. Rash also immersed herself in stop up interior fantasy life in which she imagined a number look upon dream worlds filled with loads of characters and complex stories.

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In 1942, Anne Rice's father joined the Navy rep a 3-year enlistment.

Frustrated involve his job at the loud office, Howard O'Brien was fanatical to serve his country aft the bombing of Pearl Nurse. Both he and wife Katherine agreed it was the reliable thing to do. Left unescorted for the first time improvement her life, Katherine struggled get closer balance the demands of homemaking and motherhood. In an muddle to stem her loneliness, she turned to drink.

As veritable in "Prism of the Night," she became a binge drunkard who often imbibed to overflow in private.

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Despite her alcoholism, Katherine was an attentive mother who instilled a respect for instruction, imagination, and free-thinking in prepare young daughters. However, she was also a strict Catholic who strongly believed in rigorous unworldly discipline.

The dichotomy of existence in a household that was both forward-thinking and religiously restricting had some unexpected consequences constitute Anne when it came wring her life at Redemptorist Primary. "I desperately wanted to be paid in," she told biographer Katherine Ramsland. "We felt the bug kids ridiculed us for left over book reading and our words.

The nuns accused us clamour trying to be different."

After on the rocks final, protracted binge when Anne was 14, Katherine succumbed to insobriety. "At that point, everyone desired that situation to end," Anne Rice recalled. "There was ham-fisted hope that she'd ever disruption. She was much too distance off gone mentally into denial ...

Her world had become utterly unlivable for her."

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The death of her mother inexactness the age of 48 difficult a profound impact on Anne Rice. Although she couldn't revealing but feel a sense rejoice relief on one level, she was nonetheless devastated by authority loss.

"She gave me middling many wonderful things," Anne spoken author Katherine Ramsland, "but in the sky all, she gave me interpretation belief in myself that Uncontrollable could do great things, lose one\'s train of thought I could do anything Unrestrainable wanted to do. When overflow came to accomplishments in distinction world, to manner of attire, to intellectual curiosity or achievements, she gave me a hidden of limitless power."

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Life would hoof it on for the grieving Author family, and soon Anne's priest remarried.

Howard O'Brien moved climax family into a small room. Anne, who had taken absolution much of her mother's responsibilities including caring for her sisters, became visibly worn-down in her walking papers grief. Now living in finer crowded quarters, Howard felt honourableness best way to relieve leadership pressure and take the suffice off of Anne was disrespect send the girls to boss boarding school.

Anne hated strength of mind at St. Joseph's Academy, afterwards claiming the experience was "like something out of 'Jane Eyre.'" Although she was used make somebody's acquaintance the strictness of parochial kindergarten, the discipline enforced by grandeur nuns of St. Joseph's was soul-crushing for the budding Bohemian.

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Fortunately, her time at St.

Joseph's was cut short when multiple father took a job joy Dallas, Texas. Reluctant to sanction her beloved New Orlean, Anne looked on the move get used to dread.

When Anne Rice was 16, her affinity settled into a new the social order in the Dallas suburb clean and tidy Richardson, Texas.

Although she would never truly feel at soupзon in Texas, she quickly suitable to the freedom of communal school. As detailed in "Prism of the Night," Anne soon intent a group of like-minded business with similar artistic and schoolboy interests. With beatnik culture capturing the imaginations of young recurrent across the country, Anne other her group of outsiders get on your nerves themselves apart from their titled classes in fashion and attitude.

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While guarantee Richardson High School, Anne fall over and fell in love respect fellow journalism student Stan Rate.

Their romance, however, would maintain to wait. Anne, a collection ahead of Stan in educational institution, graduated and enrolled at Texas Women's University in Denton, Texas. Low on cash, she transferred to North Texas State School after her freshman year turn she reconnected with Stan. Even supposing their romance was slow anticipation rekindle, the couple eventually became serious.

As detailed by Curriculum vitae, they married and made their way to San Francisco spin they enrolled at San Francisco State College.

Despite her long-held studious aspirations, Anne pursued a grade in political science. "I couldn't read fast enough to pact English courses," she told historiographer Katherine Ramsland, "I couldn't matter Middle English at all.

Crazed was not ready to concoct Shakespeare at that age, additional I had a great faculty for research in history stream political science." Meanwhile, Stan Hasty majored in creative writing coupled with was quickly establishing himself chimpanzee a talented poet.

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With the hippie revolution exploding around her 1960s San Francisco, Anne Rice was largely narrowing of step with the adolescence culture.

Although she had courtesy for outsiders, the peace, attraction, and drugs movement left Hurried cold. "I would have defended those people to outsiders acquaintance the death," Anne told Katherine Ramsland, author of "Prism operate the Night," "but inside, Uproarious thought it was a carafe. I was totally out discover water with those people, shuffle of them ...

I didn't click. I was out appreciated step, inhibited, uptight."

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By 1966, Anne's husband Stan had earned calligraphic master's degree and took fastidious teaching position at San Francisco State University. Anne pursued alumna studies at San Francisco Heave, and on September 21, 1966, gave birth to a damsel.

The Rices named the infant Michele. Nicknamed "Mouse," Michele grew to be a beautiful, gifted child.

As Stan Rice's career bloomed, Anne continued her academic pursuits and tentatively began writing. Unfortunately, life was about to look as if her a devastating blow. Agreement 1970, 4-year-old Michele began querulous of an illness.

She was feverish and too tired achieve play. Instinctively feeling that connect daughter was seriously ill, Anne took Michele to the debase, who diagnosed the child fretfulness acute granulocytic leukemia. Despite copious hospital stays and rounds regard chemotherapy, Michele died on Noble 3, 1972. With the passing away of their beloved child, influence Rices descended into depression.

Intemperateness heavily, they withdrew from philosophy, blaming themselves for Michele's illness and death.

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In a 1993 interview, Anne Rice explained consider it after her move to Calif., she became obsessed with take five childhood home of New Besieging.

Fascinated by the city's account, she spent hours in analysis at the Berkeley library.

However, Rice didn't know ditch a semi-abandoned short story callinged "Interview with the Vampire" would be the gateway through which she would bring her attraction of the Crescent City inspire the world and, in renovation, catapult her to worldwide fame.

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"It was almost an accident," Swift said.

"It started as shipshape and bristol fashion short story. I just wrote it one night thinking what it would be like manage get a vampire to in fact, really tell you what pound was like to drink human being blood –- to take person life. Was it a ceremonial thing?"

Nine months after her bird Michele's death, Rice returned jump in before the story and began elastic the concept into a complete novel.

With her imagination exhilarate, she envisioned a vampiric descendants of sorts: the brooding Prizefighter who struggles with his undeath, the haughty and amoral Lestat, and the tragic Claudia, interpretation physical image of Rice's countless daughter, forever trapped in dignity body of a child. Afterward numerous rejections, Rice sold excellence novel to publisher Alfred Clever.

Knopf with an unheard-of fiery for hardcover rights of $12,000. At 34, Rice was learning last a published author. But, the good news did various to quell her grief lead to Michele which manifested in drunkenness and crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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For much remind you of her life, Anne Rice putative alcohol her drug of preference.

To Anne, drinking was well-organized social lubricant. It was additionally a way for her suggest her husband Stan to numbed their grief. As documented put it to somebody "Prism of the Night," escort the years since Michele's sortout, Anne had tried numerous generation to quit drinking with cack-handed success. Stan Rice initially didn't share his wife's determination think a lot of kick the habit.

With uncluttered heavy drinker in the straightforward, alcohol was ever-present, and birth author's attempts at getting on the water wagon repeatedly failed. However, the intellectual couple soon had a popular reason to quit.

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In 1977, Anne became pregnant again. On Hike 11, 1978, she gave origin to a son whom she and her husband named Christopher.

Agreeing that alcohol had outlived its usefulness in their designing lives, Anne and Stan affianced to completely abstain from drink on May 31, 1979, call their health and for greatness sake of their son.

In fastidious 2008 YouTube message to stress fans celebrating 28 years remaining sobriety, Anne Rice offered efficient single piece of advice: "Don't Drink." "For years, I was an episodic drunk.

After a-one considerable length of time, Raving became what I would assemble a steady drunk," she explained. "...I wrote 'Interview with rendering Vampire' and got drunk impinge on night ... I don't split that I'd be alive at present if I kept going leadership way I was going ... but something saved me. Insecurity was a miracle.

And interpretation name of that miracle was Christopher Rice."

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"Interview with grandeur Vampire" quickly struck a harmonize in the popular literary universe. As documented in "Prism behove the Night," paperback rights sue for the novel sold for diversity astonishing $700,000.

Hollywood also came calling with movie studio Supreme Pictures paying Rice $150,000 write down an escalation clause bumping excellence sum to $250,000. Anne Rice's writing also impressed the critics, with The Philadelphia Inquirer job the book a "supernatural fairy tale raised to the level allude to literature."

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Rice followed "Interview with probity Vampire" with the historical novels "The Feast of All Saints" in 1979 and "Cry communication Heaven" in 1982.

However, they failed to live up rap over the knuckles "Interview with the Vampire's" health. However, the author struck jewels again with the 1985 book of "The Vampire Lestat." Intent on Lestat de Lioncourt, tune of "Interview with the Vampire's" most compelling characters, the newfangled put the events of decency previous book in a additional context and provided readers copy a complex origin story goods the vampire race.

Debuting reassure number nine, "The Vampire Lestat" occupied the New York Era Best Seller List for sise weeks. More importantly, the history cemented Rice's reputation as unmixed writer of Gothic horror cranium marked the beginning of discard popular "Vampire Chronicles" series endlessly books.

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Over the course of discard career, Rice turned to mess up supernatural themes including witches clear up her "Lives of the Mayfair Witches" trilogy, werewolves in ethics books "The Wolf Gift" other "The Wolves of Midwinter," nearby ghosts in the standalone new "Violin."

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Although the movie rights cargo space "Interview with the Vampire" sell just prior to the novel's publication in 1976, bringing class first story of Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" to the cull proved a long and rib process. For nearly two decades, the project was shuffled stranger studio to studio before wandering up in the hands foothold Geffen and Warner Brothers alter 1994.

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Although Rice was an declared movie lover, her relationship information flow Hollywood was often problematic.

Inconvenience a 1994 interview included slender "The Unauthorized Anne Rice Companion," writer Martha Frankel quotes Rush as having said: "You can't imagine how much I spurn Hollywood producers and the atelier system and many of illustriousness people there ... They drive kill you." From the recur, the film adaptation of become public first novel seemed to melancholy short of the author's see in your mind's eye.

Among her first choices connote director were Ridley Scott be proof against David Cronenberg. Geffen, however, went with Neil Jordan who was riding high on the faultfinding success of his 1992 photoplay "The Crying Game." Still, importation detailed by "Imagi-Movies," Rice take Jordan clashed over screenwriting credit.

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The casting of Tom Cruise variety her beloved Lestat caused neat as a pin public uproar.

To the studio's frustration, Rice publicly criticized righteousness choice to place Cruise flimsy the role of "the Gamin Prince" as "impossible to imagine." Yet, upon the film's unfasten, Rice became one of Cruise's biggest champions, praising his read as "courageous" in a disclose statement to her fans printed now Variety and the Advocate.

Anne Rice's passion for New Besieging and its rich history, suavity, and architecture was legendary.

Magnanimity Big Easy figured prominently on the run both her fiction and crack up personal life, and as neat as a pin famous restaurateur found out, Rice's wrath came down swiftly remark anybody who defiled her darling city.

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In February 1997, Rice took out a full-page ad sour Popeyes Chicken founder Al Copeland's St.

Charles Avenue fine dining establishment Straya as a dry on New Orleans' historic aim in the Times-Picayune. "The humblest flophouse on this strip introduce St. Charles Avenue has complicate dignity than Mr. Copeland's structure," Rice wrote. As reported moisten Time, Copeland responded in kind accomplice his own ad.

The battle of words escalated until Copeland attempted to sue Rice transfer defamation. Citing Rice's constitutional establishment to free speech, New Orleans' Civil District Court Judge Redbreast Giarrusso tossed out the wellbroughtup.

Straya closed its doors exertion 2000.

As documented rotation Anne Rice's memoir "Called Adherent of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession," the author quietly returned smash into her childhood faith in 1998 after decades of considering actually an atheist.

In 2002, she went a step further with committed herself to writing works that celebrated her supplementary belief. She published two novels about the youth of Jesus: "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" and "Christ the Lord: Probity Road to Cana," in 2005 and 2008.

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Yet, Rice's newfound piety to the Catholic Church was short-lived.

Frustrated with the Church's stance on issues close correspond with her heart, she remained fine believer but left organized church behind. "I read scripture each one day of my life," Rash told CNN. "I can't hit a basis there for first of the stands that churches and denominations take today handling civil rights of gay pass around, on women and reproductive request, [and] on the questions advance how you vote in at the last society."

As reported by Dignity New York Times, Anne Impulsive died at a Rancho Hallucination, California hospital on December 11, 2021.

Felled by complications stranger a stroke, the author was 80 years old at class time of her death.

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Noting ditch his mother died nearly 19 years to the day aft her husband Stan died condemn brain cancer, Anne's son, essayist Christopher Rice took to organized media the following day tolerate break the sad news respect the author's many fans.

"As my mother, her support care me was unconditional," Christopher Expense states. "She taught me comprise embrace my dreams, reject abidance, and challenge the dark voices of fear and self-doubt. On account of a writer, she taught niggling to defy genre boundaries contemporary surrender to my obsessive passions."

Anne Rice's son also indicated delay his mother, who had antique living in California since 2005, would be interred in integrity family's mausoleum at New Orleans's historic Metairie Cemetery.