Born in Kentucky, Robert Penn Warren studied at Vanderbilt University and was involved in The Fugitives, an informal group of Southern intellectuals, which also included Allen Tate.

Warren taught at several universities in the United States and was an important figure in the New Criticism movement, a movement that prodded a reader to interpret a poem based solely on the text.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize that he won for All the King’s Men, Warren received two subsequent Pulitzers for his poetry volumes Promises (1958) and Now and Then (1979). The American South is always a present force in Warren’s poetry and fiction.

–Christie Finn