(1908-08-31)August 31, 1908 Fresno, California, U.S.
Died
May 18, 1981(1981-05-18) (aged 72) Fresno, California, U.S.
Resting place
Ararat Cemetery
Komitas Pantheon[1]
Occupation
Novelist
playwright
short story writer
Period
1934–1981
Notable works
The Armenian and the Armenian (1935)
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
The Time of Your Life (1939)
My Name Is Aram (1940)
The Human Comedy (1943)
Come On-a My House (1951)
Notable awards
Pulitzer Prize for Drama 1940
Academy Award for Best Story 1943
Spouse
Carol Grace
(m. 1943; div. 1949)
(m. 1951; div. 1952)
Children
Aram
Lucy
Relatives
Ross Bagdasarian (cousin)
Signature
William Saroyan[2] (/səˈrɔɪən/; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.
Saroyan wrote extensively about the Armenian immigrant life in California. Many of his stories and plays are set in his native Fresno.[3] Some of his best-known works are The Time of Your Life, My Name Is Aram and My Heart's in the Highlands. His two collections of short stories from the 1930s, Inhale Exhale (1936) and The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1941) are regarded as among his major achievements and essential documents of the cultural history of the period on the American West Coast.
He has been described in a Dickinson College news release as "one of the most prominent literary figures of the mid-20th century"[4] and by Stephen Fry as "one of the most underrated writers of the [20th] century." Fry suggests that "he takes his place naturally alongside Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner".[5] Kurt Vonnegut has said that Saroyan was "the first and still the greatest of all the American minimalists.”[6]
^"Relative to William Saroyan Year". Official California Legislative Information. March 13, 2008. Retrieved February 2, 2014. Half of his ashes were buried in the Ararat Cemetery in Fresno and the remaining was interred in Yerevan, Armenia
^Armenian: Վիլեամ Սարոյեան in classical orthography and Վիլյամ Սարոյան in reformed orthography
^"William Saroyan Is Dead At 72; Wrote 'The Time of Your Life'". The New York Times. May 19, 1981. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
^"One-Man Show Tells Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author's Story". Dickinson College. September 2, 2001. Archived from the original on December 27, 2013. Retrieved December 26, 2013.
^2013 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Awards
^Quotes by Stephen Fry, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams
WilliamSaroyan (/səˈrɔɪən/; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the...
together as Complete Minimal Poems. Saroyan was born in New York City. His parents were author and playwright WilliamSaroyan and actress Carol Grace and his...
American actress and author. She is often referred to as Carol Marcus Saroyan or Carol Matthau. Carol Grace was born in New York City's Lower East Side;...
California, the daughter of the writer WilliamSaroyan and the actress Carol Grace. Her brother is writer Aram Saroyan. Following her parents' second divorce...
Sedrak Saroyan (1967–2022), Armenian general and politician WilliamSaroyan (1908–1981), Pulitzer Prize–winning Armenian-American author Carol Saroyan (1924–2003)...
series of concerts May 14–15, 1992. Named after native Fresnan novelist WilliamSaroyan, the 2,353-seat theatre is home to the Fresno Philharmonic, Fresno...
"The Armenian and the Armenian" is a short story written by WilliamSaroyan in August 1935 in New York. It was first published in 1936 in the collection...
Richard Sirak (1910–1966) and Harry Sisvan (1915–1989). The novelist WilliamSaroyan, with whom he was very close, was his first cousin. Bagdasarian graduated...
Drink the Water (1967), by Woody Allen Don't Go Away Mad (1947), by WilliamSaroyan Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938), by Langston Hughes Dream Girl (1945)...
with Ithaca, a drama film based on the 1943 novel The Human Comedy by WilliamSaroyan. Filmed in Petersburg, Virginia, it starred Ryan and had its world...
Matthau, Larry McMurtry, Vladimir Nabokov, Clifford Odets, Cole Porter, WilliamSaroyan, Irwin Shaw, President Richard Nixon and Tennessee Williams. Lazar's...
singer and actor (b. 1892) Arthur O'Connell, American actor (b. 1908) WilliamSaroyan, American author (b. 1908) May 20 – Dositej II, Archbishop of Ohrid...
The WilliamSaroyan House Museum founded on August 31, 2018, in Fresno, California is a single subject museum on the writer WilliamSaroyan. The museum...
Armenian-American history, including Soghomon Tehlirian, Victor Maghakian, and WilliamSaroyan. The Ararat Massis Cemetery was the only Armenian cemetery built outside...
(2013) Was a finalist of 2014 WilliamSaroyan International Prize for Writing in non-fiction category Shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year...
adaptation of The Laughing Matter, a 1953 novel by Armenian-American writer WilliamSaroyan. It stars Konstantin Lavronenko and Maria Bonnevie. The film premiered...
The Time of Your Life is a 1939 five-act play by American playwright WilliamSaroyan. The play is the first drama to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama...
she opened on Broadway at the Bijou Theater, playing "the Girl" in WilliamSaroyan's new play The Cave Dwellers to uniformly good reviews. The following...
"The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse" is a short story by WilliamSaroyan, published within the collection My Name is Aram. It tells the story of...
Prize for her translation of Flights. In 2020, she was awarded the WilliamSaroyan International Prize for Writing for her autofictional memoir Homesick...
Memoir. Saroyan is the daughter of award-winning minimalist poet Aram Saroyan and Gailyn Saroyan, and the granddaughter of playwright WilliamSaroyan and...
a 2006 finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the 2008 WilliamSaroyan International Prize for Writing for fiction. An excerpt from the novel...
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