Franz Wright RIP

The American poet Franz Wright died at his home on Thursday, May 14, 2015, after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 62. He and his father James Wright are the only parent/child pair to have won the Pulitzer Prize in the same category. Wright was born in Vienna, Austria. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1977.

Poet Franz Wright, 62, died at his home in Waltham, Mass., on Thursday after a long struggle with lung cancer, his publisher Knopf confirmed. Wright's 2003 collection "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" won the Pulitzer Prize.

Wright was born March 18, 1953, in Austria and as raised in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. His father was the poet James Wright, also a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

Wright's books of poetry include "F" (2013), "Kindertotenwald" (2011), "Wheeling Motel" (2009), "God's Silence" (2006), "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" (2003) and "The Beforelife" (2001), all published by Knopf.

His longtime editor at Knopf, Deborah Garrison, said, "Franz wrote fearlessly about mental illness, addiction and loneliness as well as about faith and the unending beauty of his world, no matter how broken; he never wrote a line that wasn't fiercely important to him, musical, as witty as it was deadly serious. Franz lived for poetry -- at times it seemed it kept him alive -- and he managed to write poems in which the choice to live feels continually renewed, not just an urgent daily requirement for the poet but a call to arms that includes every single reader."

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