William Saroyan

William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908, in Fresno, California, to Armenian immigrants who had fled the Ottoman Empire. Rising from an impoverished childhood in an orphanage and as a telegraph messenger, Saroyan shot to international fame with his 1934 short-story collection The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

In 1939, his play The Time of Your Life won both the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize (which he famously declined, arguing that commerce had no right to patronize art). His semi-autobiographical novels, including The Human Comedy and My Name Is Aram, radiated boundless love for ordinary working people. Per his final will, half of his ashes were interred in Yerevan's Komitas Pantheon.