Alan Cheuse, Writer and Critic, Died at 75

  Dead Famous

Alan Cheuse,  American writer and critic died in a automobile collision he was age 75.

Alan Cheuse (January 23, 1940 – July 31, 2015) was an American writer and critic.

Born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Alan Cheuse grew up in a Jewish family, the son of a Russian immigrant father and a mother of Russian and Romanian descent.

He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1957 and Rutgers University in 1961.

After traveling abroad and working for several years at writing and editing jobs, he returned to Rutgers to study for a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which he was awarded in 1974.

He wrote a thesis on the life and work of the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier).[citation needed] He taught literature at Bennington College for nearly a decade and then took posts at Sewanee: The University of the South, the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at George Mason University.

In the late 1970s he began publishing short fiction, beginning with a story in The New Yorker, followed with articles for Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, and New Letters. He published his first novel, a biographical historical work about John Reed and Louise Bryant in 1982. Other works of fiction and nonfiction followed