Stan Rice - Biography

Biography

Stan Rice was born in Dallas, Texas in 1942. He met his future wife in a high school journalism class in Richardson, Texas, and they married in Denton, Texas on October 14, 1961. They briefly attended together North Texas State University in Denton, before moving to San Francisco in 1962, to enroll at San Francisco State University, where they both earned their MA.

Rice was a Professor of English and Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. In 1977 he received the Academy of American Poets' Edgar Allan Poe Award for Whiteboy, and in subsequent years was also the recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award as well as a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Rice retired after 22 years as Chairman of the Creative Writing program as well as Assistant Director of the Poetry Center in 1989.

It was the death of his and Anne's first child, daughter Michele (1966–1972), at age six of leukemia, which sparked Stan Rice's becoming a published author. His first book of poems, based on his daughter's illness and death, was titled Some Lamb, and was published in 1975. He encouraged his wife to quit her work as a waitress, cook and theater usher in order to devote herself full-time to her writing, who both eventually encouraged their son, novelist Christopher Rice, to become a published author as well.

Rice, his wife and his son moved to Garden District, New Orleans in 1988, where he eventually opened the Stan Rice Gallery.

Stan Rice paintings are represented in the collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He had a one person show at the James W. Palmer Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. The Art Galleries of Southeastern Louisiana presented an exhibition of selected paintings in March 2005. Prospective plans are underway to present exhibitions of Rice’s paintings at various locations in Mexico.

In Prism of the Night, Anne Rice said of Stan: "He's a model to me of a man who doesn't look to heaven or hell to justify his feelings about life itself. His capacity for action is admirable. Very early on he said to me, 'What more could you ask for than life itself'?"

Poet Deborah Garrison was Rice's editor at Alfred A. Knopf for his 2002 collection, Red to the Rind, which was dedicated to Christopher, in whose success as a novelist his father greatly rejoiced. Garrison said of Rice: "Stan really attempted to kind of stare down the world, and I admire that."

Knopf's Victoria Wilson, who edits Anne's novels and worked with Stan Rice on his 1997 book, Paintings, was particularly impressed by his refusal to sell his artworks, saying, "The great thing about Stan is that he refused to play the game as a painter, and he refused to play the game as a poet."

Stan Rice died of brain cancer at age 60, on December 9, 2002, in New Orleans where he lived and was survived by Anne and Christopher, as well as his mother, Margaret; a brother, Larry; and two sisters, Nancy and Cynthia.

Rice is entombed in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.