Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Poland in 1902. His father was a Hasidic rabbi. During WWI, Singer himself considered being a rabbi, but eventually decided against it and instead worked as a proofreader in Warsaw. In 1935, Singer emigrated from Poland to the U.S. to evade the Nazi threat. He settled in New York, first working as a journalist for a Yiddish-language newspaper and later publishing a number of short stories and novels. Several Singer works, including Enemies, a Love Story and Yentl, were made into films. Singer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 and received two U.S. National Book Awards. He died after a series of strokes in 1991, at age 88.