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William Styron was born in June of 1925 in
Newport News,
Virginia. His father suffered from
depression and his mother died when he was thirteen. Following his
mother’s death, Styron was sent to a boys’ preparatory. He earned a
Bachelor of Arts degree at
Duke University (NC), then enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he served
during
World War II.
After leaving the service, he moved to
New York
worked McGraw-Hill Publishing and took classes with Hiram Haydn at the
New School for Social Research. With guidance and encouragement from
Haydn, Styron published his debut novel, Lie Down in Darkness in
1951 at the age of twenty-six. This novel launched his career and
earned him the
American
Academy’s
Prix de Rome. In 1953 he married and together he and Rose had four
children.
Six years later he published his second novel The Long March, then went
on to write Set This House on Fire and one of his most famous novels,
The Confessions of Nat Turner, which earned him the Pulitzer Prize in
1968. Styron did not publish again for eleven years, but Sophie’s
Choice, published in 1979, was well worth the wait.
The same year as the movie Sophie’s Choice appeared, Styron
produced a book of essays entitled The Quiet Dust and Other Writings.
In 1990 he published Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
Throughout the 1990s, Styron continued to write, publish, edit, and
receive awards for his contributions to American literature. Among his
works in the 1990’s is A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth
(1993) and Fathers and Daughters: In Their own Words, published with
Mariana Ruth Cook.
Styron's greatest artistic interest has always been substantive. He
holds that "Language, character, and narrative are interconnected in an
almost an inseparable way. The three are a trinity…a great book should
leave you slightly exhausted at the end."
In
the summer of 1985, Styron was struck by an illness once called
melancholia, but today referred to as clinical depression. Having
trudged "upward out of hell's black depths," Styron has been able to
record his devastating descent into depression into his work.
William Styron and his wife Rose have four children -- three daughters
and a son.
The
couple has lived in the same house in Roxbury, Connecticut, for over
thirty years.
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