Richard Laurence Sassoon, 1934-2017, was born to British citizens William and Stella Cairn Sassoon in Paris, France, on 6 June 1934. In 1939, the Sassoons moved to Tryon, North Carolina. Sassoon attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and went on to graduate from Yale University, where he majored in history and edited the Yale Literary Magazine, in 1955. He developed an intimate friendship with poet Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, during their college years, and the two traveled throughout Europe together while Sassoon was studying at the Sorbonne and Plath was studying at Cambridge. In 1958, Sassoon became an American citizen. He moved to San Francisco in the 1960s and worked in the theater industry. Sassoon became interested in Tibetan Buddhism and in 1975 moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he taught at the Naropa Institute and Karma Dzong and took up painting. A prolific writer, Sassoon wrote fiction, poetry, plays, and essays on a wide variety of subjects, including history, politics, and religion. He passed away in Boulder on 5 July 2017. Sassoon's father was a second cousin of poet Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1967; their great-grandfather was David Sassoon, 1792-1864, a wealthy businessman and leader of the Jewish community in Bombay, India.