‘Vampire’ author Anne Rice passes away at 80

Anne Rice, the American author known for her best-selling book ‘Interview with the Vampire’, has passed away at the age of 80, according to The New York Times.

She died of ‘complications resulting from a stroke’, her son Christopher Rice wrote on social media.

Rice is best known for ‘The Vampire Chronicles’, a series of books that began with the publishing of ‘Interview with the Vampire’ in 1976.

The book was adapted into a 1994 film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas. Rice has written over 30 books, more than a dozen of which are part of the ‘Vampire’ series.

She was born in New Orleans on Oct 4, 1941. She was married to the poet Stan Rice, who died in 2002. They had two children, Michelle, who died at age 5, and Christopher.

“In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage, awash in memories of a life that took us from the fog laced hills of the San Francisco Bay Area to the magical streets of New Orleans to the twinkling vistas of Southern California,” Christopher Rice said in his statement.

“As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions,” said Christopher, who is also an author.

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