Norman Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1923 and graduated from Harvard University in 1943. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), made him famous. He co-founded The Village Voice in 1955.
He was a leading figure of New Journalism. The Armies of the Night (1968) won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the National Book Award, and The Executioner's Song (1979) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1980. He died in New York City in 2007.