Anne Rice, author of gothic novels, dead at 80

Anne Rice, the gothic novelist wide known for her bestselling caller “Interview With the Vampire,” died precocious Saturday astatine the property of 80.

Rice died owed to complications from a stroke, her lad Christopher Rice announced connected her Facebook leafage and his Twitter page.

“In her last hours, I sat beside her infirmary furniture successful awe of her accomplishments and her courage,” Christopher Rice wrote successful the statement.

Anne Rice was the writer of the 1976 caller “Interview With the Vampire,” which was aboriginal adapted, with a publication by Rice, into the 1994 movie directed by Neil Jordan and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It’s besides acceptable to beryllium adapted again successful an upcoming TV bid connected AMC and AMC+ acceptable to premiere adjacent year.

“Interview With the Vampire,” successful which newsman Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, was Rice’s archetypal caller but implicit the adjacent 5 decades, she would constitute much than 30 books and merchantability much than 150 cardinal copies worldwide. Thirteen of them were portion of the “Vampire Chronicles” begun with her 1976 debut.

Born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien successful 1941, she was raised successful New Orleans, wherever galore of her novels were set. Her begetter worked for the postal work but made sculptures and wrote fabrication connected the side. Her older sister, Alice Borchardt, besides wrote phantasy and fearfulness fiction. Rice’s parent died erstwhile Rice was 15.

Raised successful an Irish Catholic family, Rice wrote astir her fluctuating spiritual journey, including the 2008 memoir “Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession.” But successful 2010, she announced that she was nary longer Christian, saying “I garbage to beryllium anti-gay. I garbage to beryllium anti-feminist. I garbage to beryllium anti-artificial commencement control.”

“I believed for a agelong clip that the differences, the quarrels among Christians didn’t substance a batch for the individual, that you unrecorded your beingness and enactment retired of it. But past I began to recognize that it wasn’t an casual happening to do,” Rice told The Associated Press then. “I came to the decision that if I didn’t marque this declaration, I was going to suffer my mind.”

Rice was expected to beryllium interred during a backstage ceremonial astatine a household mausoleum successful New Orleans connected an undisclosed date, according to the statement. A nationalist solemnisation of beingness was to instrumentality spot adjacent year.