About Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Walter Van Tilburg Clark (August 3, 1909 – November 10, 1971) was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and educator. He ranks as one of Nevada's most distinguished literary figures of the 20th century, and was the first inductee into the 'Nevada Writers Hall of Fame' in 1988, together with Robert Laxalt, Clark's mentee and Nevada's other heralded twentieth century author. Two of Clark's novels, The Ox-Bow Incident and The Track of the Cat, were made into films. As a writer, Clark taught himself to use the familiar materials of the western saga to explore the human psyche and to raise deep philosophical issues. == Biography == Clark was born in East Orland, Maine, but grew up in Reno, Nevada and graduated from Reno High School in 1926. Clark went to college at the University of Nevada, Reno, where his father Walter Ernest Clark was president. In 1933 Clark married Barbara Frances Morse and moved to Cazenovia, New York, where he taught high school English and began his fiction-writing career. Clark's first published novel, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940), was successful and is often considered to be the first modern Western, without the usual clichés and formulaic plots of the genre. The novel is a story about a lynch mob mistaking three innocent travelers for cattle rustlers suspected of murder. After the travelers are hanged, the lynch mob finds that they killed the wrong suspects.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.