William Saroyan Biography

American short-story writer and dramatist, born in Fresno, California, to Armenian-American parents. Saroyan won early fame with his short stories. His play My Heart's in the Highlands (1939), a paean to the simple life, was followed by The Time of Your Life (1939), which deals with a group of down-and-outs at a seedy San Francisco waterfront bar, whose essential goodness the play reveals: it won a Pulitzer Prize, which Saroyan quixotically refused. His other plays include Love's Old Sweet Song (1940); The Beautiful People (1941); a double bill, Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning and Talking to You (1942); Hello, Out There (1942); Get Away Old Man (1943); and The Cave Dwellers (1957). Saroyan produced and directed many of his own plays off Broadway; his rhapsodic impressionistic writing is at its best in the evocation of mood and the creation of character.