Anne Rice

Anne Rice was named after her father and was born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien. She was raised in New Orleans. She attended Catholic school and later Texas Woman’s University, eventually transferring to San Francisco State University where she graduated with a degree in political science. On her first day of school, she told teachers her name was Anne, and she later legally changed her name to Anne. Anne Rice married poet Stan Rice in 1961, and the couple had two children. The death of her daughter Michele from leukemia at the age of five in 1972 had a profound impact on Rice and eventually led to the creation of her debut novel, Interview with the Vampire, which was published in 1976. The novel was the first in The Vampire Chronicles, a series that would span multiple books, including The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), and Memnoch the Devil (1995). Rice also explored other supernatural genres, including witches in The Witching Hour (1990). She also wrote erotica using several pseudonyms. In the late 1990s, Rice experienced a profound religious awakening and returned to the Catholic Church, which influenced her writing during this period, resulting in novels like Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005). However, she later distanced herself from organized religion because of its position on same-sex relationships. Rice continued to write until her death in 2021 from complications of a stroke.