Editing Stan Rice

{{short description|American poet and artist (1942–2002)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2013}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = Stan Rice
| image =
| caption = In his Garden District studio
| birth_name = Stanley Travis Rice Jr.
| birth_date = {{birth date|mf=yes|1942|11|7}}
| birth_place = [[Dallas]], Texas, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|2002|12|9|1942|11|7}}
| death_place = [[New Orleans]], Louisiana, U.S.
<!-- | death_cause = Brain cancer
| burial = [[Metairie Cemetery]]
 -->| occupation = Poet, painter
| spouse = {{marriage|[[Anne Rice|Anne O'Brien]]|1961}}
| children = {{plainlist|
* Michele Rice
* [[Christopher Rice]]}}
| website = {{URL|http://www.stanrice.com}}
}}
'''Stanley Travis Rice Jr.'''<ref>{{cite web | url=https://yenpress.com/interview-with-the-vampire/ | title=INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: CLAUDia's STORY by Anne Rice, art by Ashley Marie Witter }}</ref> (November 7, 1942 – December 9, 2002) was an American poet and artist. He was the husband of author [[Anne Rice]].

==Biography==
Rice was born in [[Dallas, Texas]], in 1942. He met his future wife [[Anne Rice|Anne O'Brien]] in high school. They briefly attended [[North Texas State University]] together, before marrying in 1961 and moving to San Francisco in 1962, to enroll at [[San Francisco State University]], where they both earned their bachelor's and master's degrees.<ref name="Contemporary Authors">{{cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/rice-stan-1942-2002|title=Rice, Stan 1942-2002|work=Contemporary Authors|via=Encyclopedia.com|accessdate=December 12, 2021}}</ref>
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'',<ref>{{cite web |title=Edgar Allan Poe Award |url=http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/129 |website=Poets.org |access-date=27 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130803140245/http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/129 |archive-date=August 3, 2013 |date=11 May 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref> 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]].{{citation needed|date=April 2020}} Rice retired after 22 years as Chairman of the [[Creative Writing]] program as well as Assistant Director of the Poetry Center in 1989.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stan-Rice-poet-and-painter-2711376.php|title=Stan Rice -- poet and painter|work=SFGate|access-date=2017-08-03}}</ref>

It was the death of his and Anne's first child, daughter Michele (1966–1972), at age six of [[leukemia]], which led to Stan Rice 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, and both eventually encouraged their son, novelist [[Christopher Rice]], to become a published author as well.

[[File:1239 First NOLA.jpg|thumb|The Brevard-Rice House in New Orleans, purchased by Stan and [[Anne Rice]] in 1989.]]

Rice, his wife and his son moved to the [[Garden District, New Orleans]], in 1988, where he eventually opened the Stan Rice Gallery. In 1989, they purchased the Brevard-Rice House, 1239 First Street, built in 1857 for Albert Hamilton Brevard.

Stan Rice's 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.{{cn|date=January 2023}}

In ''Prism of the Night'',<ref>''Prism of the Night'' by [[Katherine Ramsland]], {{ISBN|0-452-26862-1}}</ref> 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 novelist son Christopher, in whose success as a writer his father greatly rejoiced. Garrison said of Rice: "Stan really attempted to kind of stare down the world, and I admire that."<ref name=angel>[https://www.angelfire.com/journal/riceans/RIP_stan.html In Memory of Stan Rice]</ref>

Knopf's [[Victoria Wilson]], who edited 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."<ref name=angel/>

==Personal life==
Rice was an atheist.{{refn|group=note|Reviewing Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Matt Thorne noted: "In a long author's note, Rice explains how she experienced an old-fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, before leaving the Church at 18 due to sexual pressure and her desire to read authors she considered forbidden to her, such as Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus. Two years later she married a passionate atheist, the poet and artist Stan Rice, and in 1974, began a literary career that she now retrospectively views as representing her 'quest for meaning in a world without God'."<ref name="Thorne">{{cite news |last1=Thorne |first1=Matt |title=Out of darkness, into profit |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3649059/Out-of-darkness-into-profit.html |access-date=27 April 2020 |work=The Telegraph |date=25 December 2005 |page=7:4}}</ref>}}

==Death==
Stan Rice died of [[brain cancer]] at age 60, on December 9, 2002,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/poetschoice0000hirs|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/poetschoice0000hirs/page/323 323]|quote=Stan Rice poet and painter.|title=Poet's Choice|last=Hirsch|first=Edward|date=2006|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=015101356X|language=en}}</ref> in New Orleans where he lived and was survived by [[Anne Rice|Anne]] and [[Christopher Rice|Christopher]], as well as his mother, Margaret (1921-2018); a brother, Larry; and two sisters, Nancy and Thia.

Rice is entombed in [[Metairie Cemetery]] in [[New Orleans]].

==Poetry collections==
*''Some Lamb'' (1975)
*''Whiteboy'' (1976) (earned the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the [[Academy of American Poets]])
*''Body of Work'' (1983)
*''Singing Yet: New and Selected Poems'' (1992)
*''Fear Itself'' (1997)
*''The Radiance of Pigs'' (1999)
*''Red to the Rind'' (2002)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-dec-11-me-rice11-story.html|title=Stan Rice, 60; Poet, Painter Encouraged Wife to Write|last=Oliver|first=Myrna|date=2002-12-11|work=Los Angeles Times|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US|issn=0458-3035}}</ref>
*''False Prophet'' (2003) (Posthumous)

==Poetry video recordings==
Two series of recordings – one from 1973 at San Francisco State University and the other from 1996 at the poet's New Orleans home by filmmaker Blair Murphy – capturing Stan Rice reading several of his poems are on the YouTube site dedicated to the poet.

==Other books==
*''Paintings'' (1997)

==Footnotes==
===Notes===
{{reflist|group=note}}

===References===
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.stanrice.com Stan Rice Gallery], New Orleans
*[https://www.youtube.com/user/StanRiceDotCom Stan Rice poetry readings]
*[http://www.thundersandwich.com/ts15/stanrice.html Thunder Sandwich]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rice, Stan}}
[[Category:20th-century American painters]]
[[Category:20th-century American male artists]]
[[Category:American atheists]]
[[Category:American male painters]]
[[Category:American male poets]]
[[Category:Writers from New Orleans]]
[[Category:Deaths from brain cancer in the United States]]
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:2002 deaths]]
[[Category:Artists from New Orleans]]
[[Category:Burials at Metairie Cemetery]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:Deaths from cancer in Louisiana]]
[[Category:Anne Rice]]