William Golding (1911- 1993) was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911 and educated at Oxford University. His first book,
Poems, was published in 1934. Following a stint in the Royal Navy and other diversions during and after World War II, Golding wrote his first novel,
Lord of the Flies (1954), while teaching school. Many novels followed, including
The Inheritors (1955),
Pincher Martin (1956), and
Free Fall (1959), as well as a play,
The Brass Butterfly (1958), and a collection of shorter works,
The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
Darkness Visible (1979) and the Booker Prize for
Rites of Passage (1980). In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today." He was a member of the Royal Society of Literature and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988. William Golding died in June 1993 and is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, in England.
Lois Lowry is the two-time Newbery Award-winning author of
Number the Stars,
The Giver Quartet, and numerous other books for young adults.
Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2015 National Medal of Arts.
Jennifer Buehler is an associate professor of educational studies at Saint Louis University and President of The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English.
E. M. Forster was an English writer best remembered for novels including
Passage to India,
Howards End, and
A Room with a View.
E. L. Epstein was a literary scholar and book editor who published the first American paperback edition of
Lord of the Flies in 1959.