About William Styron
William Clark Styron Jr. (June 11, 1925 – November 1, 2006) was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968 for The Confessions of Nat Turner. == Early life == Styron was born in the Hilton Village historic district of Newport News, Virginia, the son of Pauline Margaret (Abraham) and William Clark Styron. His birthplace was less than a hundred miles from the site of Nat Turner's slave rebellion, the inspiration for Styron's most famous and controversial novel. Styron's mother was from the North while his father was a Southern liberal, laying out broad racial perspectives in the household. Styron's father, a shipyard engineer, suffered clinical depression, as would later Styron himself. In 1939, at age 14, Styron lost his mother after her decade-long battle with breast cancer. Styron attended public school in Warwick County, first at Hilton School and then at Morrison High School (now known as Warwick High School) for two years, until his father sent him to Christchurch School, an Episcopal college-preparatory school in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Styron once said "of all the schools I attended... only Christchurch ever commanded something more than mere respect—which is to say, my true and abiding affection." On graduation, Styron enrolled in Davidson College and joined Phi Delta Theta.
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