| Richard Hall | |
| Birth Name: | Richard Walter Hirshfeld |
| Birth Date: | November 26, 1926 |
| Birth Place: | New York City, New York |
| Death Date: | October 29, 1992 |
| Occupation: | Writer |
| Nationality: | American |
| Genre: | novels, short stories, drama |
| Notableworks: | Couplings |
Richard Hall (November 26, 1926 – October 29, 1992), sometimes credited as Richard Walter Hall, was an American novelist, playwright and short story writer.[1]
He was born in Manhattan in 1926 as Richard Walter Hirshfeld to Jewish parents, who later changed the family's name to Hall after experiencing an antisemitic incident.[2] Raised in Westchester County, Hall served in the United States Army during World War II, and was educated at Harvard University and New York University.[3] He worked in advertising and public relations, and taught at Inter American University in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1970s.[3]
His first novel, The Butterscotch Prince, was published in 1975.[3]
As a book critic and essayist, he contributed to publications including The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice and The Advocate.[3] He was the first openly gay critic ever admitted to the National Book Critics Circle.[3]
His other published books included the short story collections Couplings (1981), Letter from a Great Uncle (1985) and Fidelities (1992), the novel Family Fictions (1991) and Three Plays for a Gay Theater (1983), a compilation of his stage plays Happy Birthday Daddy, Love Match and Prisoner of Love.[3]
He died on October 29, 1992, in New York City, of AIDS-related causes.[3] He was predeceased in 1989 by his longtime partner Arthur Marceau.[3]
He posthumously won a Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2005 for "Country People",[4] a supernatural-themed short story originally from Fidelities which was republished in the 2004 anthology Shadows of the Night and adapted to a short film in 2019.[5] [6]
Couplings was the subject of an essay by Jonathan Harper in the 2010 non-fiction anthology .[7]