William Faulkner

Born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897, and raised in Oxford, William Faulkner drew deeply on the history, speech, and social life of the American South. That regional grounding became the heart of his fiction, especially the interconnected novels and stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

He published novels including The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, and became known for challenging narrative techniques that helped reshape the modern novel. In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his powerful and distinctive contribution to modern fiction.

Faulkner also wrote short stories, screenplays, and later novels that expanded his reputation in the United States and abroad. He died in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 6, 1962, but his books remain central to American literature and are still admired for their ambition, difficulty, and emotional force.