John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, died on Tuesday at the age of 76 after a long fight with lung cancer.

It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning at the age of 76, after a battle with lung cancer, Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer said in a statement.

He also wrote hundreds of short stories, poetry, literary criticism and reviews in The New Yorker magazine.

He was one of our greatest writers and he will be sorely missed, Latimer said.

The Washington-based Academy of Achievement described Updike as one of America's premier men of letters.

Updike received two Pulitzer Prizes (Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest) and saw his The Witches of Eastwick made into a movie three years after it hit bookstores in 1984.