Richard Yates | |
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![]() Yates in 1960 | |
Born | Richard Walden Yates February 3, 1926[1] Yonkers, New York |
Died | November 7, 1992 Birmingham, Alabama | (aged 66)
Occupation | Novelist, short story writer |
Literary movement | Realism |
Richard Walden Yates (February 3, 1926 – November 7, 1992) was an American fiction writer identified with the mid-century "Age of Anxiety." His first novel, Revolutionary Road, was a finalist for the 1962 National Book Award, while his first short story collection, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, brought comparisons to James Joyce. Critical acclaim for his writing, however, was not reflected in commercial success during his lifetime.
Interest in Yates has revived somewhat since his death, partly because of an influential 1999 essay by Stewart O'Nan in the Boston Review, a 2003 biography by Blake Bailey and the 2008 Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning film Revolutionary Road starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.