Gina Berriault, American writer. Radcliffe Institute Independent Study scholar; Centro Mexicano de Escritores, Mexico City, 1963; recipient Aga Khan prize Paris Review, O. Henry award.
Background
Berriault was born in Long Beach, California, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was a freelance writer and Berriault took her inspiration from him, using his stand-up typewriter to write her first stories while still in grammar school.
Career
Berriault had a prolific writing career, which included stories, novels and screenplays. Her writing tended to focus on life in and around San Francisco. Berriault taught writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop and San Francisco State University.
She adapted her short story "The Stone Boy" for a film of the same title, released in 1984.
The same story had previously been adapted by another writer for a 1960 television presentation. The Gina Berriault Award, created by Peter Orner and Fourteen Hills Review at San Francisco State University in 2009, honors Berriault"s legacy.
Berriault died in 1999, at age 73, at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, California.