October 4, 1941

Anne Rice, the best-selling American author of Interview with the Vampire and other occult novels, was born on this day in 1941. Rice was born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien to Irish Catholic parents Howard and Katherine Allen O’Brien. She hated her name and changed it to Anne when she started Catholic school. She grew up in what was described as the Irish Channel, an Irish ghetto of sorts in New Orleans. After her mother died when she was just 14 years old, her and her sisters were placed in St. Joseph’s, an orphanage. Anne moved with her sisters, father and stepmother to Texas where she met husband and poet Stan Rice. Her most successful series is The Vampire Chronicles.