Acclaimed author and former director of the University’s master of fine arts program in creative writing Vance Bourjaily has died at the age of 87.
Bourjaily, known as a promising writer who emerged in the post-World War II literary scene and received the University’s prestigious Boyd professorship, wrote several acclaimed novels during his career. His first, “The End of My Life” from 1947, was considered by some critics to be on par with Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms.”
Bourjaily came to the University in 1985 and retired in the late ’90s. He passed away Tuesday in Greenbae, Calif.