E.L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is widely recognized as one of America's great masters of the historical novel. His most recent work, The March (2005), is a fictional account of General William Tecumseh Sherman's infamous military rampage from the burned-out ruins of Atlanta to the Carolinas, leaving a path of destruction that affected the South for generations. The March received the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award and the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award.

Mr. Doctorow served as senior editor for New American Library from 1959-1964 and editor-in-chief of Dial Press from 1964-1969. Since 1969, Doctorow has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He has been associated with several colleges and universities, including the University of California, Irvine; Sarah Lawrence College; Yale University Drama School; and Princeton University. Currently, he serves as the Lewis and Loretta Gluckman Professor in American Letters at New York University. Among other honors, Mr. Doctorow was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and the William Dean Howells medal of the American Academy of Arts & Letters for Billy Bathgate (1990); the National Book Award for World's Fair (1986); and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Ragtime (1976). In 1984 he was made a member of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1972, and was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 1998.