Anne Rice

Anne Rice, born Howard Allen O'Brien after her father, was born on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a family of three sisters, her Catholic father who was a postal worker, and her mother, a struggling alcoholic. The author, who claims, "I was never a good student. I daydreamed in class. I wrote stories in my notebooks. I learned the basics, bus most of my active intellectual life was outside of school," had legally changed her name to Anne by the time she was in first grade (Anne 2).

Anne's mother finally lost her battle with alcoholism when Anne was fourteen. Anne and her family moved to Texas where, at age eighteen, she abandoned the Catholic faith saying that, "I just didn't believe it was the one true Church established by God to give grace" (Anne 2). In 1998, Anne returned to the Catholic church. At twenty, Anne married her high school boyfriend, Stan Rice. After their marriage in October 1961, the couple moved to San Francisco where they attended San Fransisco State, and Anne earned her masters in creative writing.

Shortly after, in 1966, Anne gave birth to her first child, Michele. One night, "I dreamed my daughter, Michele, was dying- that there was something wrong with her blood" (Castranova 377). Not long after, in 1970, Michele was diagnosed with leukemia. She died in 1972 before her sixth birthday. Anne was overcome with grief, and she expressed her emotion by writing her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, in only five weeks. This triggered her to write more vampire and historical novels including the Vampire Chronicles series, the New Tales of the Vampires series, the Lives of the Mayfair Witches series, and five other novels under the pseudonyms Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure, which means "cloak." In more recent years, Anne has had many tests of her strength including falling into a diabetic coma in 1999 and the death of her husband in 2002 (Rice 66). Her most recent work is titled Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. This novel is an acount of the life of Christ based on the gospels and the work of respected New Testament scholars.

Works Cited

Anne Rice. Biography Resource Center. 2 December 2003. .

Castronova, Frank, ed. Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Volume 100. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2002.