Ernest Hemingway

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899, Ernest Hemingway worked as a journalist before serving as an ambulance driver in World War I. Those early experiences fed into fiction that was spare in style but emotionally loaded, and he went on to become one of the best-known American writers of the twentieth century.

His major books include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. He received the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, recognized for his mastery of narrative and his influence on modern literary style.

Hemingway also became famous for the adventurous life that surrounded his work, from reporting and travel to fishing and big-game hunting. He died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961, but his direct, understated voice still feels modern and continues to influence writers around the world.