Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy was born in 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island. McCarthy spent his formative years growing up in Knoxville, where his father served as a lawyer. After graduating from high school, Cormac briefly attended the University of Tennessee, but didn’t finish with a degree. Instead, Cormac began writing, publishing his first novel, The Orchard Keeper in 1965.
The novel was a success, but it was Blood Meridian in 1985 – his fifth novel – that became McCarthy’s biggest breakthrough. The novel today ranks on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language books of the century, and is considered one of the greatest novels in the American literary canon. But in recent years, Cormac McCarthy has become even better known for his multiple novels which have been adapted into award-winning films, such as: All the Pretty Horses (1992), Child of God (1973), The Road (2006), and No Country for Old Men (2007), which earned four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Road, adapted into the film starring Viggo Mortenson, earned McCarthy a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Today, Cormac McCarthy continues to write and is rumored to be working on a very lengthy novel scheduled for publication in the coming years. McCarthy has not published anything since The Road, and so whatever novel is in the works will much-anticipated and welcomed among his fans.
