Anne Rice
American author (1941–2021)

Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941 – December 11, 2021) was an American author of Gothic fiction, erotic literature, and Bible fiction. She is best known for writing The Vampire Chronicles. She later adapted the first volume in the series into a commercially successful eponymous film, Interview with the Vampire (1994).
Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life in the city before moving to Texas, and later to San Francisco and Berkeley, California. She was raised in an observant Catholic family but became an agnostic as a young adult.
She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire (1976), while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, she published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Several years later she distanced herself from organized religion, while maintaining a Christian faith in her personal life. She later considered herself a secular humanist.
Rice's books have sold over 100 million copies, making her one of the best-selling authors of modern times.
The public source identifies “Anne Rice” as american author (1941–2021). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Anne, Rice and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q184785. VIAF identifies the subject as 111989334. The Library of Congress control number is n79068491. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 2021, 1994 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anne Rice” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.