On November 5, 1930, Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters.” Lewis, born in Sauk Center, Minnesota, was the first American to win the distinguished award. Lewis established his literary reputation in the 1920s with a series of satirical novels about small-town life in the United States, including Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Elmer Gantry (1927). In these novels, his central characters strive to escape their emotionally and intellectually repressive environments, with varying degrees of success. In 1926, he turned down the Pulitzer Prize awarded him for Arrowsmith but in 1930 decided to accept Sweden’s Nobel Prize. Find Sinclair Lewis at the library, on hoopla and on OverDrive.

Sam Shepard (born Samuel Shepard Rogers III), playwright, actor, author and television and film director, was born on November 5, 1940.  He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. Shepard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. Find Sam Shepard at the library and on hoopla.