Richard Hall was a novelist, an acclaimed short-story writer, and a widely produced playwright. He was book editor of The Advocate from 1976 to 1982 and the first openly gay critic to be elected to the National Book Critics Circle. His landmark essay, "Gay Fiction Comes Home," was the front-page article in The New York Times Book Review in June 1988, and his reviews have also appeared in The New Republic, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Village Voice. His final two books, Family Fictions: A Novel and a collection of short stories, Fidelities, were published by Penguin. Richard Hall died of AIDS-related complications in October 1992.
