Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada on June 10, 1915. He attended the University of Chicago, received a Bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from Northwestern University in 1937, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. He taught at several universities including the University of Minnesota, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, New York University, and Boston University. His first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944. His other works include The Victim, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories, More Die of… Heartbreak, and Something to Remember Me By. He received numerous awards including the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and three National Book Awards for fiction for The Adventures of Augie March in 1954, Herzog in 1964, and Mr. Sammler's Planet in 1970. Also a playwright, he wrote The Last Analysis and three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He died on April 5, 2005.
Writer Cynthia Ozick grew up in the Bronx and attended New York University, where she earned a B. A., and The Ohio State University, where she earned a Ph.D. Ozick wrote the novel Trust, and the short stories "The Sense of Europe", which was published in Prairie Schooner, and "The Shawl", which was included in The World of the Short Story. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Partisan Review, and Esquire. Ozick has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Harold Straus Living Award from the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters.