U.S. writer John Updike dies

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - American author John Updike, a leading writer of his generation who chronicled the emotional drama of American small-town life with searing wit and vivid prose, died on Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 76.

"It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning," said Nicholas Latimer of Alfred A. Knopf, a unit of Random House. "He was one of our greatest writers, and he will be sorely missed."

Updike died in a hospice in Massachusetts, the state where he lived for many years.

Updike was known for mining themes of sexual tension, and spiritual and moral angst in small-town settings -- issues he explored through his four novels and a novella about the life of the fictional Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.

"Rabbit is Rich," published in 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A decade later, "Rabbit at Rest" won a second Pulitzer.

One of America's most prolific writers, Updike was acclaimed nearly as much for his short stories, poetry and critical essays as for his novels.

For many readers, he was well known as a seemingly endless source of short stories in The New Yorker magazine.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he studied English at Harvard University, where he contributed to, and later edited, the satirical Harvard Lampoon magazine. He later joined the writing staff of the New Yorker.