Past Presentation: Chicago Tribune Literary Prize (2007)
Edgar Laurence Doctorow has written a dazzling list of acclaimed novels and stories, perhaps most notably World’s Fair (1985), The March (2005), and Homer and Langley (2009). Doctorow majored in philosophy at Kenyon College. Following graduate work at Columbia University and a stint in the army, he settled into a successful career as an editor at New American Library and Dial Press for much of the 1960s. With the 1971 publication of his third novel, The Book of Daniel (nominated for the National Book Award) he became a fulltime writer. In 1975, his unique fictional blend of historical recreation and social criticism found full, syncopated expression in Ragtime, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Much of Doctorow’s work illuminate forgotten eras of twentieth-century America, including Loon Lake (1980), Lives of the Poets (1980), and Billy Bathgate (1989). More recent works include City of God (2000) and The March (2005), which reimagined William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating southern campaign and earned him another National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He currently serves as Glucksman Professor in American Letters at New York University. Doctorow is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is active with Human Rights Watch and International PEN.
Learn more about E. L. Doctorow.
Above: Photograph by Nancy Crampton.