Authors 10/22/12

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H Munro., H. was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse. 

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. Born 1862 and died on 1910. William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He moved to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married.

Julie Otsuka (born May 15, 1962) is a Japanese American author. She won the American Library Association's Alex Award in 2003 for When the Emperor was Divine, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2011 for The Buddha in the Attic which was not only a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller but also placed as a National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Otsuka was born on May 15, 1962, in Palo Alto, California. Her father worked as an aerospace engineer, while her mother worked as lab technician before she gave birth to Otsuka. Both of her parents were of Japanese descent, with her father being an issei and her mother being a nisei. At the age of nine, her family moved to Palos Verdes, California. She had two brothers growing up, Michael Otsuka, is currently teaching at University College London. 

William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his life, and Holly Springs/Marshall County.