Richard Burgin, founding editor of Boulevard literary magazine, dies at 73
Richard Burgin, noted American writer, composer, critic, academic, and founding editor of the award-winning literary magazine Boulevard, passed away on Oct. 22 in his home in Clayton, Missouri, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 73.
The son of two prominent American musicians, Burgin was born and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was a graduate of Lawrence Academy in Groton and received his bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and his MA with highest honors from Columbia University.
He began writing in childhood and broke into print in 1969 when he was still an undergraduate at Brandeis with Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges. This essential work on Borges has since been published in ten foreign language editions and was reprinted in 2013 in an anthology of Borges’ last interviews. A second book of interviews, Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in 1985 has also been widely translated and reprinted.
Burgin’s variegated body of work—novels, essays, reviews, and twelve collections of short stories—received five Pushcart prizes, as well as several other awards and commendations. His works have been published in foreign-language editions. A Russian translation of his novel Ghost Quartet was published in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2006, and an anthology of his selected writings appeared in French translation in 2011. His last book of stories Don't Think was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2016.
Burgin was a founding editor of several literary journals, including the Boston Review, the New York Arts Journal, and Boulevard, which has been called "one of the half-dozen best literary journals" in America. The last, which he founded in 1984 and edited until 2015, saw success, growth, and stability under Burgin’s tenure and published writers of significance such as Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, John Ashbery, Billy Collins, Lorrie Moore, Alice Hoffman, Edmund White and David Mamet.
As a critic, Burgin reviewed for Partisan Review and The New York Times Book Review as well as leading newspapers in Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Boston, where he was a columnist for The Boston Globe and The Globe Magazine. He taught at Tufts University, Drexel University, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Saint Louis University, where he was a professor of Communication and English from 1996 until his retirement in 2013.
A lover of jazz and classical music, Burgin knew the works of his favorites, Mahler, Stravinsky and Schoenberg virtually by heart. He played jazz piano by ear and composed the music and lyrics to numerous songs, which have been issued on six albums. He was also a lifelong basketball fan whose greatest pleasure was joining pick-up games whenever and wherever he found one in progress.
Burgin is survived by his son, Richard Daniel Burgin of Chicago, his sister, Professor Diana L. Burgin of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Doreen Harrison of St. Louis.