John Knowles
John Knowles was born in 1926 in West Virginia. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1945 and served in the Air Force during World War II for eight months. He later graduated from Yale in 1949 and published a Separate Peace in 1959. Many of the characters and pieces of the book are based on his experiences at the Phillip Exeter Academy, but Knowles said that his experiences were very happy (unlike in the book). A Separate Piece was Knowle's most popular book and won awards such as the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the William Faulkner Award. John Knowles died at the age of 75 in 2001.