John Steinbeck in 1939 Born

Port Warwick street names[edit]

The Port Warwick neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia, was named after the fictional city in Styron's Lie Down in Darkness. The neighborhood describes itself as a "mixed-use new urbanism development." The most prominent feature of Port Warwick is William Styron Square along with its two main boulevards, Loftis Boulevard and Nat Turner Boulevard, named after characters in Styron's novels. Styron himself was appointed to design a naming system for Port Warwick, deciding to "honor great American writers", resulting in Philip Roth Street, Thomas Wolfe Street, Flannery O'Connor Street, Herman Melville Avenue and others.^[20]

Death[edit]

Styron died from pneumonia on November 1, 2006, at age 81, on Martha's Vineyard. He is buried at West Chop Cemetery in Vineyard Haven, Dukes County, Massachusetts.^[21]

Personal life[edit]

While doing a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Styron renewed a passing acquaintance with young Baltimore poet Rose Burgunder. They married in Rome in the spring of 1953. Together, they had four children: daughter Susanna Styron is a film director; daughter Paola is an internationally acclaimed modern dancer; daughter Alexandra is a writer, known for the 2001 novel All The Finest Girls and 2011 memoir Reading My Father: A Memoir; son Thomas is a professor of clinical psychology at Yale University.

Bibliography[edit]

Note – the following is a list of the first American editions of Styron's books

• 
  Lie Down in Darkness. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951.
  
• 
  The Long March. New York: Random House, 1956.^[22]
  
• 
  Set This House on Fire. New York: Random House, 1960
  
• 
  The Confessions of Nat Turner. New York: Random House, 1967.
  
• 
  In the Clap Shack. New York: Random House, 1973.
  
• 
  Sophie's Choice. New York: Random House, 1979.
  
• 
  Shadrach. Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1979.
  
• 
  This Quiet Dust and Other Writings. New York: Random House, 1982. Expanded edition, New York: Vintage, 1993.
  
• 
  Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. New York: Random House, 1990.
  
• 
  A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth. New York: Random House, 1993
  
• 
  Inheritance of Night: Early Drafts of Lie Down in Darkness. Preface by William Styron. Ed. James L. W. West III. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.
  
• 
  Havanas in Camelot: Personal Essays. New York: Random House, 2008.
  
• 
  The Suicide Run: Fives Tales of the Marine Corps. New York: Random House, 2009.
  
• 
  Selected Letters of William Styron. Edited by Rose Styron, with R. Blakeslee Gilpin. New York: Random House, 2012.
  
• 
  My Generation: Collected Nonfiction. Edited by James L.W. I West III. New York: Random House, 2015.