Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of, Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., a successful architect, and Edith Sophia Vonnegut.  He had two older siblings, a brother Bernard, and a sister Alice.  It was at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, that Vonnegut first began to express his writing talents, as the editor of the school newspaper.  After graduating in 1940, he entered Cornell University to study biochemistry.  However, he found himself to have no suitable talents for such pursuits, and was being rewarded with poor grades.  Vonnegut's only solace came from becoming a columnist and editor of the Cornell Daily Sun.  In, 1942, he then joined the army, narrowly escaping being expelled from Cornell for poor grades.  It was during his tour of duty in the army that several of his formative experiences occurred.  First, his mother committed suicide in 1944, and several months later he was captured by the German Army in the Battle of the Bulge, and while being forced to work producing a vitamin enriched malt for pregnant women, happened to live through the firebombing of Dresden (an incident that killed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined).

After being liberated by the Soviets, Vonnegut returned home, working as a Police Reporter for the Chicago News Bureau and studying anthropology at the University of Chicago.  He later moved to Schenectedy, New York, where he worked in Press Relations for the General Electric Plant. It was this experience that led to the creation of his first novel Player Piano, which bluntly forecasts the effects of mechanization and class stratification. It was after the publication of this novel that he moved to Rhode Island, while in addition to writing short stories, he taught High School english and opened the first Saab dealership in the United States.  After realizing the shrinking of the Short Story market, he began concentrating entirely on novels.

It was Vonnegut's novels that gained him critical acclaim and a rabid following in the late sixties and seventies.  His gutsy, prophetic, Science Fiction parodies created a popularity and demand that nearly overwhelmed him.  He has continued to write novels, his last being Hocus Pocus, in 1990, following a failed suicide attempt in 1984 for which he blames his mother's example, but cites his failure as his reason for continuing.  Kurt Vonnegut has also written two autobiographical books, Palm Sunday, in 1981, and Fates Worse than Death, in 1991, but true to his form, neither follows the path of a true biography.  Described as one of the greatest original American authors, Vonnegut's simplistic novels speak volumes to those who read them today.

Happy Birthday Wanda June

Sun Moon Star (1980) (Illustrated by Ivan Chermayeff)