William Faulkner

Born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi. His great-grandfather was a Civil War colonel, railroad builder, and novelist. The family moves to Oxford, Mississippi, when he's five. He'll set almost everything he writes there.

Rejected by the U.S. Army for being too short (5 foot 5). He joins the Royal Air Force in Canada, faking a British accent and adding a "u" to his last name. The war ends before he finishes training. He returns to Oxford, never having flown in combat, and keeps the "u."

Publishes The Sound and the Fury. Four narrators. One is a person with an intellectual disability. One is suicidal. The timeline jumps across three decades. His publisher expects it to sell about 3,000 copies. It does.

Takes a screenwriting job in Hollywood out of desperation. He works on scripts for Howard Hawks, contributes to The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. He hates Los Angeles. He drinks heavily. He keeps flying back to Oxford between drafts.

Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. He almost doesn't go to Stockholm. His daughter convinces him. His acceptance speech, delivered in a barely audible voice, declares: "I decline to accept the end of man." He donates the prize money to establish a scholarship fund in Oxford.

Dies of a heart attack in Byhalia, Mississippi. He's 64. He'd fallen from a horse weeks earlier and was self-medicating with bourbon and painkillers. He left behind 19 novels and over 100 short stories, nearly all set in his invented Yoknapatawpha County.