Thomas Cullinan

Cullinan was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, in an Irish Catholic family. He graduated from Cathedral Latin High School in 1938, and later attended Case Western Reserve University. In addition to The Beguiled (1966), Cullinan's novel about the American Civil War, he wrote three novels--The Besieged (1970), The Eighth Sacrament (1977), and The Bedeviled (1978)--as well as several plays, which are still produced. He received a Ford Foundation grant to represent the United States at a literary colloquium in Berlin in 1964, and he wrote a weekly television program in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, both for WKYC, a local television affiliate, and for Case Western Reserve University. Cullinan died of a heart attack on June 11, 1995 at a local theater in Cleveland Heights where he was judging a high school playwrighting festival. Cullinan's papers are kept at the Kent State University archive, which include an unpublished play based on the Marilyn Sheppard murder case.