Truman Capote

Truman Capote, born Truman Streckfus Persons in 1924 and died in 1984, was an American novelist, screenwriter and playwright whose short stories, novels and plays have been praised as literary classics. His childhood was unsettled by his parents' divorce, a long absence from his mother and repeated moves, and he decided early that he would be a writer. The story Miriam, published in 1945, brought him a contract with Random House for his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, which appeared in 1948. He won wide acclaim for the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1958 and for the true crime book In Cold Blood in 1966, a journalistic account of the murder of a Kansas farm family that took him six years to write with help from his friend Harper Lee. He is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, and more than twenty films and television productions have adapted or dramatized his work and life.