Those of us who are writers have lost two giants this past week, Anne Rice and bell hooks. I studied and taught both in my college literature classes. I wrote critically about Anne Rice, and received a gracious note from her regarding my work and a class I devoted to her. I wrote poetry in her honor and published it, and she appears in my essays for The Gothic world of Anne Rice and the Virginia Woolf Miscellany, and in my book The Subversion of Romance in the Novels of Barbara Pym, and in my dissertation.
Rice was also a passionate doll collector, and like me, student of Tudor history and Anne Boleyn. I have a couple of her dolls, and several of her books from her library.
bell hooks, too, was an influence on my graduate work and dissertation. She defined creativity, and was a trail blazer for women's and marginalized voices.
It's hard to keep going when you lose your muse,, and these two left us far too soon. To paraphrase FDR, every time a writer dies, part of the vision of humanity passes with her.
