Truman Capote

Born September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisianna

Truman Capote (September 30, 1924 – August 26, 1984) was an American novelist, short-story writer and playwright. He gained international fame with his "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood (1966), an account of a real life crime in which an entire family was murdered by two sociopaths. The Louisiana-Mississippi-Alabama area provided the setting for much of Capote's fiction. Truman Capote was born in New Orleans, and brought up in Monroeville, Alabama. In his childhood Capote made friends with Harper Lee, who portrayed him as Dill in her world-famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

At the age of 17, Capote ended his formal schooling. He found work at The New Yorker, where he attracted attention with his eccentric style of dress. Capote's early stories were published in quality, magazines and in 1946 he won the O.Henry award. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), depicted a boy, Joel Knox, growing up in the Deep South.

Then Capote went to Europe, where he wrote fiction and nonfiction. These European years marked the beginning of Capote's work for the theater and films. In 1949 A Tree of Night appeared, which gathered together short stories published in Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle and other magazines.

In the 1950s Capote wrote The House of Flowers and The Grass Harp (1951), collaborated with John Huston on Beat the Devil (1954), and following a return to the United States, wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958).

Among Capote's works from the 1960s is the classic A Christmas Memory and In Cold Blood. Capote planned to write a Proustian novel to be called Answered Prayers. This plan never materialized. Problems with drink and drugs, and disputes with other writers, exhausted Capote's creative energies. In interviews, Capote negative anecdotes about the people he knew distanced him from his friends.
Truman Capote died in Los Angeles, California, of liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication.