John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books
including The Poorhouse Fair the Rabbit series ( Rabbit Run Rabbit Redux Rabbit Is Rich
Rabbit At Rest ) Marry Me The Witches of Eastwick which was made into a major feature film
Memories of the Ford Administration Brazil In the Beauty of the Lilies Toward the End of
Time Gertrude and Claudius and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short
stories including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love which includes a final
Rabbit story Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such
as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and are now collected into numerous
volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse and a new edition
of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton. His novels stories and non-fiction
collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize the National Book Award the PEN Faulkner
Award the American Book Award the National Book Critics Circle Award the Rosenthal Award and
the Howells Medal. Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year at Oxford's
Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the N ew
Yorker and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.
