Ronald C. Offen, Chicago writer and founder of Free Lunch

Chicago poet and publisher Ronald C. Offen has died at the age of 79. Though Offen was a drama critic, book reviewer, editor, and author of five books of poetry, he is best known for his passion for “Free Lunch,” the literary magazine he founded and published. Offen authored two biographies on “tough-guy” actors, and held several high-profile positions in Chicago’s literary scene.

Read more about Offen’s life in the Chicago Tribune:

In 1970, Mr. Offen co-authored "Dillinger: Dead or Alive?" with writer Jay Robert Nash. He also wrote two biographies on tough-guy actors, James Cagney and Marlon Brando .

Inspired by those personalities, Mr. Offen wrote the humorous "Poet As Bad Guy."

I like to enter small, jerkwater towns, with engine roaring, then rock to a stop, and park before a group of local clowns, to make a cigarette-dangling entrance.

To make ends meet, Mr. Offen worked as a cabdriver, insurance investigator, middle school library assistant and nightclub doorman.

In 1978, he moved to California and continued his career as a poet, editor, drama critic and librarian. After a bout with cancer, Mr. Offen started Free Lunch, A Poetry Miscellany.

"As a poet myself, I knew how dispiriting it was to get a printed rejection slip with no indication as to why my work was being rejected," Mr. Offen wrote in an editor's note. "I feel that this commitment to commenting on submissions is just one of the unique qualities of Free Lunch."

Free Lunch published many of the best-known contemporary American poets, such as Billy Collins , Stephen Dunn, Stuart Dybek, Donald Hall, X.J. Kennedy, Lisel Mueller and David Wagoner . . .