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Richard Gustave Stern was an American novelist, short story writer, and educator.
Stern was born in New York City on February 25, 1928. He attended the University of North Carolina from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in 1947. After a year working in Indiana, Florida and New York City, he went to Harvard University where he received an MA in English Literature.
In 1949, he taught as a Fulbright Scholar in Versailles, France. From 1950-51 he was an assistant professor and taught at Heidelberg University. From 1952-54, he was a member of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and received a PhD from the University of Iowa in 1954. After a year teaching at Connecticut College in New London, he came to the University of Chicago where he taught from 1955-2002. He retired as Helen A Regenstein Professor of English and American Literature in 2004.
During his tenure at the University of Chicago, Stern was allegedly involved in the "suppression" of the "beat edition" of the Chicago Review. At the time the Chicago Review was a student/faculty literary publication published by the University of Chicago. The editor then was Irving Rosenthal. The "beat edition" of the Review was to include excerpts from Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs, and a few Jack Kerouac stories. According to Rosenthal, Stern, along with Joshua Taylor, another faculty member, wanted to suppress the winter issue, being himself "so quick to protect the administration."
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