Fans lined up from Orpheum Theater's entrance all the way down the block to the VooDoo Mart liquor store on Canal Street Saturday, awaiting an opportunity to finally bid farewell to the late Anne Rice , the New Orleans-born queen of Goth literature. No one since Marie Laveau contributed as much to New Orleans’ supernatural mystique than she.

Rice, the author of the sensation 1976 novel “Interview with the Vampire” and 35 other enormously popular books, died in December 2021 at age 80. The COVID-19 pandemic made a large public memorial impossible at the moment, but her son Christopher Rice and her friend Eric Shaw Quinn made up for lost time with a theatrical extravaganza befitting the cultural icon.

The ornate, 1921 Orpheum was ideal for the event. The audience of Rice devotees blend

See Full Page