NEW YORK — Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker who wrote “The Basketball Diaries,” died Friday. He was 60.

He died from a heart attack at his home in Manhattan Friday, his ex-wife Rosemary Carroll told the New York Times.

Carroll was a fixture of the 1970s downtown Manhattan scene, where he mixed with artists such as Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. His life was shaped by drug use, which he wrote about extensively.

Published in 1978, “The Basketball Diaries” is a memoir of Caroll’s youth in New York City. It was made into a movie in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Carroll also published several poetry collections. His 1980 album, “Catholic Boy,” has been hailed as a landmark punk record.

Hughes was still an infant when his mother committed suicide in 1963 by putting her head in a gas oven; he was seven when his father’s second wife, Assia Wevill, killed herself (and her four-year-old daughter) by exactly the same means. And 40 years later, on March 16, 2009, Hughes took his own life, hanging himself in his Alaska home.

Read the rest here – The Suicide Gene? – The Daily Beast.

Nolan choked on a piece of food Friday at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, according to a statement from his family carried in the Irish media. The hospital confirmed his death Saturday.

“Christopher Nolan was a gifted writer who attained deserved success and acclaim throughout the world for his work,” Irish President Mary McAleese said in a statement, adding that his achievements were “all the more remarkable given his daily battle with cerebral palsy.”

Nolan published a volume of poems and short stories entitled Dam Burst of Dreams in 1981 when he was 15.

His second book, an autobiography told in the third-person entitled Under the Eye of the Clock , was published when he was 22. It was awarded the illustrious Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1988. The book was later adapted for the stage by Michael Scott and performed as Torchlight and Lazer Beams.

In 1999, his novel The Banyan Tree , which chronicles the life of Westmeath woman Minnie O’Brien, was published to critical acclaim.

More of this story here:
• Christopher Nolan, Irish novelist, dies at 43 – TODAY: Book news- msnbc.com.

• Irish author Christopher Nolan dies – The Irish Times – Fri, Feb 20, 2009.

With Lloyd Bridges

Dorothy Bridges, a poet, widow of “Sea Hunt” actor Lloyd Bridges and matriarch of the acting family that includes sons Jeff and Beau, died Monday. She was 93.

Bridges died of natural causes at her home in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, family spokeswoman Jean Sievers said.

Born Dorothy Simpson and sometimes credited as Dorothy Dean,  on Sept. 19, 1915, in Worcester, Mass., she was married to Lloyd Bridges for 60 years, until his death in 1998. The two met while performing in a play at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dorothy Bridges later appeared in a handful of movies and an episode of “Sea Hunt” with her husband, whom she called Bud.

At the age of 89, she published the memoir “You Caught Me Kissing.”

She also coached her children, according to an obituary from the family.

Bridges wrote poetry for five decades. In 2005, at age 89, she published “You Caught Me Kissing: A Love Story.” It included a collection of Valentine’s Day poems she wrote to her husband each year, a practice she continued after his death.

She is survived by sons Beau and Jeff; daughter Lucinda; 11 grandchildren including actors Jordan, Casey, Dylan and Emily; two great-grandchildren and a brother.

Her Poetry can be seen at

http://www.dorothybridges.com/

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