His own experience assisting his terminally ill wife in ending her life set him on a path to founding the Hemlock Society and writing a best-selling guide.
His 15 well-plotted novels teemed with romance and strange coincidence. An erudite literary critic with an ear for language, he also wrote a raft of nonfiction books.
She wrote lovingly and often hilariously about her harrowing childhood in a working-class Southern family, as well as about the violence and incest she suffered.
For over 50 years, as a historian, lecturer and author, he fought to protect Beaux-Arts buildings in New York and Chicago from falling to the developer’s wrecking ball.
Tipped off by the detective Frank Serpico, he wrote an explosive series on police corruption in New York City, sparking an investigation by the Knapp commission.
Senna, who is mixed-race, has made a career satirizing the lives of characters like her. Her new novel takes elements from her history and twists them to the extreme.