Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder grew up in Wisconsin, California, and China, as his father was a diplomat. Wilder earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale in 1920 and a Master of Arts degree in French from Princeton in 1926. Wilder then began writing novels and plays and working as a professor at various institutions, including University of Chicago and Harvard. Wilder’s first success as a novelist came with the publication of The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Wilder also won Pulitzers for the plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1932). Wilder served as an Army lieutenant colonel in WWII and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.