Robert Penn Warren – 1905-1989

Honored by being named the first official poet laureate of the nation in 1986, Warren is better known as a literary critic and novelist. Although most of his work is literary rather than popular in nature, his 1946 novel All the King’s Men, loosely based on the life and career of Louisiana’s Huey Long, became a bestseller, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1949.