Works of American writer William Saroyan include short stories, such as "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (1934), plays, most notably The Time of Your Life (1939), and novels. This Armenian author set much in Fresno, sometimes under a fictional name, the center of life in California. From Bitlis, Turkey, his parents migrated. After death of his father at the age of three years in 1911, people placed Saroyan in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described. Five years later, in 1916, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother, Takoohi Saroyan, secured work at a cannery. He continued his own education and took odd jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San Francisco telegraph company, for support. After his mother showed him some of his father, he decided. Overland Monthly published a few of his early short articles. His first stories appeared in the 1930s. The Armenian journal Hairenik published "The Broken Wheel" under the name Sirak Goryan in 1933. Childhood experiences among the Armenian fruit of the San Joaquin Valley based much that dealt with the rootlessness of the migrant. The collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, about a young boy and the colorful characters of his migrant family. People translated it into many languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_...

Victor Sawdon Pritchett was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena (née Martin). His father, a London businessman in financial difficulties, had come to Ipswich to start a shop selling newspapers and stationery. The business was struggling and the couple were lodging over a toyshop at 41 St Nicholas Street where Pritchett was born on 16 December 1900. Beatrice had expected a girl, whom she planned to name after the Queen. Pritchett never liked his first name, which is why he always styled himself with his initials; even close friends would call him VSP. Pritchett's father was a steady Christian Scientist and unsteady in all else. Walter and Beatrice had come to Ipswich to be near her sister who had married money and lived in Warrington Road. Within a year Walter was declared bankrupt, the family moved to Woodford, Essex, then to Derby, and he began selling women's clothing and accessories as a travelling salesman. Pritchett was soon sent with his brother Cyril to live with their paternal grandparents in Sedbergh, where the boys attended their first school. Walter's business failures, his casual attitude to credit, and his easy deceit obliged the family to move frequently. The family was reunited but life was always precarious; they tended to live in London suburbs with members of Beatrice's family. They returned to Ipswich in 1910, living for a year near Cauldwell Hall Road, trying to evade Walter's creditors. At this time Pritchett attended St. John's School. Subsequently Pritchett attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Dulwich College but he stayed nowhere for very long. When his father went to fight in World War I, Pritchett left school. Later in the war Walter turned his hand to aircraft design, of which he knew nothing, and his later ventures included art needlework, property speculation, and faith healing. Pritchett was a leather buyer from 1916 to 1920, when he moved to Paris, where he worked as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for the Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. From 1926 he wrote reviews for the paper and for the New Statesman, which later appointed him literary editor. Pritchett's first book described his journey across Spain (Marching Spain 1928) and Clare Drummer (1929) was about his experiences in Ireland. Whilst in Ireland he met his first wife, Evelyn Vigors, but it was not to be a happy marriage. Pritchett published five novels but he claimed not to enjoy their creation. His reputation was established by a collection of short stories (The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1932)). In 1936 he divorced his first wife, and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts; they had two children. The marriage lasted until Pritchett's death, although they both had other relationships. His son is the journalist Oliver Pritchett and his grandson (son of Oliver) is the cartoonist Matt Pritchett. During World War II Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information whilst continuing to submit a weekly essay to the New Statesman. After the war he wrote widely and he started taking teaching positions at universities in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. He was fluent in German, Spanish, and French, and published successful biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977) and Anton Chekhov (1988), although he did not know Russian and had never visited the Soviet Union. Pritchett was knighted in 1975 for his services to literature and became Companion of Honour in 1993. His awards include Heinemann Award (1969), PEN Award (1974), W.H. Smith Literary Award (1990), and Golden Pen Award (1993). He died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.\_S.\_Pr...

People best know American writer Thomas Clayton Wolfe for his autobiographical novels, including Look Homeward, Angel (1929) and the posthumously published You Can't Go Home Again (1940). Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels and many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He mixed highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. Wolfe wrote and published books that vividly reflect on American culture and the mores, filtered through his sensitive, sophisticated and hyper-analytical perspective. People widely knew him during his own lifetime. Wolfe inspired the works of many other authors, including Betty Smith with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Robert Morgan with Gap Creek; Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, said, "My writing career began the instant I finished Look Homeward, Angel." Jack Kerouac idolized Wolfe. Wolfe influenced Ray Bradbury, who included Wolfe as a character in his books. (from Wikipedia)