Her own rags-to-riches story mirrored those of many of her resilient heroines, and her dozens of novels helped her amass a fortune of $300 million. Read more
Category: Obituaries
Henry Taylor, Prize-Winning Poet With an Eye on Rural Life, Dies at 82
Henry Taylor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who drew on his upbringing in rural Northern Virginia — galloping on horseback, riding a combine through the fields — to write exquisitely crafted verses about wild places, the inevitability of change and what he called the “consequences of ignorant choices,” died Oct. 13 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Read more
Japanese Poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, Master of Modern Free Verse, Dies at 92
Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died. Read more
Dorothy Allison, Author of ‘Bastard Out of Carolina,’ Dies at 75
Dorothy Allison, who wrote with lyrical, pungent wit about her working-class Southern upbringing — and about the incest and violence that shaped her — and whose acclaimed 1992 novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” based on her harrowing childhood, made her a literary star, died on Tuesday at her home in Guerneville, Calif., in Sonoma County. Read more
Gary Indiana, Acerbic Cultural Critic and Novelist, Dies at 74
Gary Indiana, the elfin novelist, cultural critic, playwright and artist whose crackling prose and lacerating wit captured the ravages of the AIDS crisis, Manhattan’s downtown art scene, lurid true crimes and his own search for love, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. Read more
Lore Segal, Mordant Novelist of Émigré Life, Dies at 96
Lore Segal, a virtuosic and witty author of autobiographical novels of her life as a young Jewish Viennese refugee in England and as an émigré in America, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. Read more
Robert Coover, Inventive Novelist in Iconoclastic Era, Dies at 92
Robert Coover, who along with Donald Barthelme, John Barth and others occupied the vanguard of postmodern American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, and who went on to a long and prolific career writing and teaching, died on Saturday in Warwick, England. Read more
Nelson DeMille, Blockbuster Author Who Thrilled Millions, Dies at 81
Nelson DeMille, a beloved and prolific author whose propulsive thrillers featuring terrorist hijackings, Russian spy schools, gruesome murders, Mafia kingpins, wartime crimes and military malfeasance made him a publishing juggernaut, died on Tuesday in Mineola, N.Y. Read more
Leonard Riggio, Who Built Barnes & Noble Into a Bookselling Empire, Dies at 83
Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83. Read more
Lewis H. Lapham, Harper’s Editor and Piercing Columnist, Dies at 89
Lewis H. Lapham, the scholarly patrician who edited Harper’s Magazine for nearly three decades, and who in columns, books and later his own magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, attacked what he regarded as the inequities and hypocrisies of American life, died on Tuesday in Rome. Read more
