Romulus Linney was the author of three novels, four opera librettos, twenty short stories, and 85 plays which have been staged throughout the United States, in Europe and Asia.  His plays include The Sorrows of Frederick, Holy Ghosts, Childe Byron, Heathen Valley, 2, and an adaptation of Ernest L. Gaines’s novel A Lesson Before Dying, which has been produced in New York and in numerous regional theaters.  Recently, Linney wrote a libretto for an opera based on his first play The Sorrows of Frederick, with music by Scott Wheeler, commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater.  He also completed a full-length play about Alzheimers’s disease titled Over Martinis, Driving Somewhere, which received a workshop at New York Stage and Film in 2010.  Among Linney’s many awards were two Obie awards, one for sustained excellence in playwriting; two National Critics Awards; three Drama-Logue Awards; and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters which conferred upon him its Award in Literature, Award of Merit and its highest award, the Gold Medal.  He was the founding playwright of Signature Theatre Company, which will name a theater in his honor in the new Signature Center, scheduled to open in 2011.  Romulus Linney died this year at the age of 80.