Robert Penn Warren
(1905–1989)

Robert Penn Warren was one of the most versatile, prolific, and distinguished writers of our time. He has written poetry, stories, novels, plays, criticism, essays, textbooks, and a biography, and has received three Pulitzer Prizes.

Warren was born in Guthrie, Kentucky. When he was 16, he entered Vanderbilt University, where he began to write poetry. After graduating from Vanderbilt in 1925, he studied at the University of California, Yale, and Oxford. In 1935, he became one of the founding editors of the literary magazine, The Southern Review. Just over a decade later, he was awarded his first Pulitzer Prize for his novel, All the King's Men (1947), which explores the subject of southern politics. He received his second Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for Promises, a volume of poetry; and in 1980 he won a third Pulitzer Prize for Now and Then (1979), another collection of poetry.

Warren has consistently used southern settings and characters in both his poetry and fiction, but at the same time he focuses on universal themes. In his work, he emphasizes love of the land, continuity between generations, and the need for self-knowledge and fulfillment in an often violent world.

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