Anne Rice

She was married to poet Stan Rice from 1961 till his death in 2002. The couple had two children. Their daughter Michelle died of leukemia as a small child while their son Christopher is a popular novelist.

She was raised in a Roman Catholic family but took to atheism as an adult. She converted back to Catholicism a few years ago only to renounce the religion again.

Anne Rice was born in New Orleans to Howard O’Brien and Katherine Allen. She has three other sisters, one elder and two younger. Her father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and had an interest in writing. She was raised as a Roman Catholic, but later on denounced the religion.

She had a difficult childhood, marked by poverty and her mother’s alcoholism which claimed her life when Anne was just 15 years old. She went to Richardson High School and graduated in 1959.

After briefly attending Texas Woman’s University, she moved to North Texas State College. She had to take a break from college due to financial problems.

She moved to San Francisco where she found employment and began to attend night classes at the University of San Francisco. She earned her B.A. in Political Science in 1964, and M.A. in Creative Writing in 1972.

Her literary career began in 1976 when her debut novel, ‘Interview with the Vampire’ was published. The novel was an expansion of a short story she had written some years ago, and it went on to become a bestseller.

She wrote a historical novel, ‘The Feast of all Saints’ in 1979, which dealt with the people of mixed race who lived before the Civil War.

She followed it with another historical novel, ‘Cry to Heaven’, in 1982.

She started writing under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure and published a set of three erotic novels, known as ‘The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy’, which became very popular and overshadowed the success of her debut novel.

Her return to the gothic horror genre was marked by the publication of the novel ‘The Vampire Lestat’ in 1985. The novel covered the story of an impoverished aristocrat who becomes an arrogant vampire.

She is most famous for her series ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ which was a set of novels based on the life of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Many of the novels became bestsellers, and ‘Interview with the Vampire’ (1976) was made into a film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Her erotic series ‘The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy’, written under the pseudonym A.N.Roquelaure consisting of three novels published between 1983 and 1985 explicitly described the sexual adventures of the characters. This series was a very big commercial success.