William Faulkner – 1897-1962

Faulkner drew on his experience of the American South, especially his native Mississippi, to create a fictional universe of remarkable depth and richness. He took an intensely local approach that illuminated fundamental and universal human issues, and he did so in a bravura narrative style that combined the timeless elements of traditional storytelling with avant-garde literary modernism, including dazzling shifts in time, place, and the consciousness of his characters. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.