William Faulkner (1897–1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Although he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays, he is primarily known for his works set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Faulkner's work was published widely during the 1920s and 1930s, but he remained relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature.Photograph: Carl Van Vechten; restoration: Adam Cuerden