William Forrester (1930-2000) was a Scottish-American author who wrote the 1954 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Avalon Landing.
Biography[]
William Forrester was born in Dranmurie, Scotland in 1930, the child of a local school teacher and his wife. His father served as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot during World War II, and, during William's late teens, the family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York. Forrester received a scholarship from Columbia University, where he studied chemistry, writing, and journalism. Shortly after graduation, at the age of 23, he wrote his first and highly acclaimed novel Avalon Landing, and instant success due to its interweaving of memory, drama, and reality. It was hailed as a "modern-day fairy tale", and he was awarded a "Book of the Year Award" and the 1954 Pulitzer Prize. Forrester became a recluse, however, and lived a quiet and secretive life from his apartment in The Bronx, New York City. In 1999, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, he tutored the 16-year-old African-American prodigal youth Jamal Wallace and helped him become a better writer while Wallace attended the elite Mailor-Callow prep school. Forrester found a rare friend in Wallace, who took him out to a Madison Square Garden basketball game, only for Forrester to suffer an anxiety attack due to a flood of memories of how he had often gone there with his late brother. Forrester later vouched for Wallace when he was nearly expelled from the school on false plagiarism charges, and Forrester, in his last months, decided to bequeath his apartment to Wallace in his will. Forrester died while on a trip to Scotland on the eve of Wallace's graduation.