William Styron

William Clark Styron Jr. (June 11, 1925 – November 1, 2006) was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.

Styron was best known for his novels, including: Lie Down in Darkness (1951), his acclaimed first work, published when he was 26; The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt; Sophie's Choice (1979), a story "told through the eyes of a young aspiring writer from the South, about a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and her brilliant but psychotic Jewish lover in postwar Brooklyn".

In 1985, he had his first serious bout with depression. Once he recovered from his illness, Styron was able to write the memoir Darkness Visible (1990), the work for which he became best known during the last two decades of his life.

Styron was born in the Hilton Village historic district of Newport News, Virginia, the son of Pauline Margaret (Abraham) and William Clark Styron. He grew up in the South and was steeped in its history. His birthplace was less than a hundred miles from the site of Nat Turner's slave rebellion, later the source for Styron's most famous and controversial novel.

Styron's Northern mother and liberal Southern father gave him a broad perspective on race relations. Styron's childhood was a difficult one. His father, a shipyard engineer, had clinical depression, which Styron himself would later experience. His mother died from breast cancer in 1939 when Styron was still a…