Richard Stern (1928-2013) was a novelist, short-story writer, and, at the time of his death, the Helen Regenstein Emeritus Professor of English and of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He was the author of twenty-one works of fiction and nonfiction. He published his first novel, Golk, in 1960 and the last, Pacific Tremors, in 2001. In 1985, he received the Medal of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Additional honors included a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Heartland Prize.