Romulus Zachariah Linney IV (September 21, 1930 – January 15, 2011) was an American playwright and novelist. Life and career Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland (née Thompson) Linney and physician Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Romulus Zachariah Linney, a prominent North Carolinian who served in the American Civil War and as a U.S. Congressman. Linney grew up in the town of Madison, Tennessee where his father was a regular M.D. He also lived with his extended family for a few years during the Great Depression in the Linney/Coffey homestead in Boone, North Carolina and returned to the homestead to visit his favorite cousins, the Coffeys, throughout his life. Linney recalled that his mother "was a very good amateur actress" and when she starred in the Nashville Community Theatre's 1940 production of Our Town as Mrs. Gibbs, he was deeply moved by her performance, particularly by her character's death. "I became really connected to my mother and it was the first time I was really shattered by a play. And in many ways that was the beginning. It, in a very visceral way, showed me the profound impact theater can have... Music might give you exultation or something else equally profound, but theater at a great stroke can just shatter you, can break you." Linney's father died of throat cancer when Linney was 13 years old. Linney said about his father's death, "I've never gotten over it. My father was a very good man...I think his death is in everything I do. All other experiences in life pall beside the death of a parent you dearly love, when you have to deal with that as a child. No religion can console you for it. Nothing can." After his father's death, Linney and his mother moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended middle school and high school. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. He is an alumnus of HB Studio in New York City. He authored three novels, four opera librettos, twenty short stories, and 85 plays which have been staged throughout the United States from South Coast Repertory in California to the Virginia Museum Theater (VMT) in Richmond, and in Europe and Asia. His plays include The Sorrows of Frederick, Holy Ghosts, Childe Byron, Heathen Valley, and an