Author. He was an award-winning American author of the 20th century. Born the 4th child of Armenian immigrants, his father was a preacher and a poet. When he was age three, his father died, and the next year he was placed in an orphanage with his three siblings since their mother was unable to provide for them. He remained in the orphanage five years before being reunited with his mother. He left formal education at age 15 and self-educated himself at the Fresno Public Library. At the age of eighteen he left home, and following a difficult start in New York City, he became one of America's most prolific writers. Autobiographical elements are strong in all his writings including his Armenian heritage and reflections of the destitution of the Great Depression years. In 1933 his first short stories were published in the Armenian journal "Hairenik." His short story collection "My Name is Aram" became an international bestseller. Starting in 1934 and for the next 15 years, his short stories, novels, and Broadway plays were popular everywhere including his 1939 lyrics for the 1951 #1 Billboard hit song by Rosemary Clooney, "Come On-a My House." His 1939 five-act play, "The Time of Your Life," earned him the 1940 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Circle Award, which was the first time a drama had received both awards. The drama has been revived three times on Broadway, first in 1940, then 1969 and 1975; adapted to a 1948 film with James Cagney; and for a television production in 1958. He rejected the Pulitzer Prize according to the William Saroyan Foundation, on the grounds of his "strong feelings about commerce patronizing the arts." In 1943 Saroyan received an Academy Award for his screenplay for "The Human Comedy." During his lifetime he had 60 books published. On the tenth anniversary of his death, Saroyan was the first and only individual to be jointly honored by a Commemorative Postal Stamp issued by both the United States and USSR. He died only about a mile from where he was born. He was cremated and his ashes were split with half enshrined in the Pantheon of Greats in Yerevan, Armenia while the other half were interred under a black imported granite headstone from India in Ararat Cemetery in California, the burial place of Armenian immigrants who were featured in his short stories, novels and songs. He married Carol Grace, but the couple divorced in 1952. They had two children. In 2008 a full-view statue of William Saroyan was erect in Yerevan, Armenia. On August 31, 2018 his home in Fresno was opened as a museum.