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Truman Garcia Capote ( kə-POH-tee; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television productions. Capote had a troubled childhood caused by his parents' divorce, a long absence from his mother, and multiple moves. He was planning to become a writer by the time he was eight years old, and he honed his writing ability throughout his childhood. He began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of "Miriam" (1945) attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf and resulted in a contract to write the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood (1966), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home. Capote spent six years writing the book, aided by his lifelong friend Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Early life Truman Capote was born at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Lillie Mae Faulk (1905–1954) and salesman Archulus Persons (1897–1981). He was sent to Monroeville, Alabama, where, for the following four to five years, he was raised by his mother's relatives. He formed a fast bond with his mother's distant relative, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, whom Truman called "Sook". "Her face is remarkable – not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind", is how Capote described Sook in "A Christmas Memory" (1956). In Monroeville, Capote was a neighbor and friend of Harper Lee, who would also go on to become an acclaimed author and a lifelong friend of Capote's. Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird likely models Dill's characterization after Capote. As a lonely child, Capote taught himself to read and write before he entered his first year of school. Capote was often seen at age five carrying his dictionary and notepad, and began writing fiction at age 11. He was given the nickname "Bulldog" around this age. On Saturdays, he made trips from Monroeville to the nearby city of Mobile on the Gulf Coast, and at one point submitted a short story, "Old Mrs. Busybody", to a children's writing contest sponsored by the Mobile Press Register. Capote received recognition for his early work from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1936. In 1932, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, José García Capote. José was a former Spanish colonel who became a landlord at Union de Reyes, Cuba. He adopted the child as his son, renaming him Truman García Capote. Shortly afterward, José was convicted of embezzlement, after which the family was forced to leave its home on Park Avenue. Of his early days, Capote related, "I was writing really sort of serious when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day, and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it." In 1932, he attended the Trinity School in New York City. He then attended St. Joseph Military Academy. In 1939, the Capote family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and Truman attended Greenwich High School, where he wrote for both the school's literary journal, The Green Witch, and the school newspaper. When they returned to New York City in 1941, he attended the Franklin School, an Upper West Side private school now known as the Dwight School, and graduated in 1942. That was the end of his formal education. While still attending Franklin in 1942, Capote began working as a copy boy in the art department at The New Yorker, a job he held for two years before being fired for angering poet Robert Frost. Years later, he reflected, "Not a very grand job, for all it really involved was sorting cartoons and clipping newspapers. Still, I was fortunate to have it, especially since I was determined never to set a studious foot inside a college classroom. I felt that either one was or wasn't a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome. I still think I was correct, at least in my own case." He left his job to live with relatives in Alabama and began writing his first novel, Summer Crossing. He was called for induction into the armed services during World War II, but he later told a friend that he was "turned down for everything, including the WACS". He later explained that he was found to be "too neurotic". Friendship with Harper Lee Capote based the character of Idabel in Other Voices, Other Rooms on his Monroeville, Alabama neighbor and best friend, Harper Lee. Capote once acknowledged this: "Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Harper Lee's mother and father, lived very near. She was my best friend. Did you ever read her book, To Kill a Mockingbird? I'm a character in that book, which takes place in the same small town in Alabama where we lived. Her father was a lawyer, and she and I used to go to trials all the time as children. We went to the trials instead of going to the movies." After Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and Capote published In Cold Blood in 1966, the authors became increasingly distant from each other. Writing career Short story phase Capote began writing short stories around the age of eight. In 2013, the Swiss publisher Peter Haag discovered fourteen unpublished stories, written when Capote was a teenager, in the New York Public Library Archives. Random House published these in 2015, under the title The Early Stories of Truman Capote. Between 1943 and 1946, Capote wrote a continual flow of short fiction, including "Miriam", "My Side of the Matter", and "Shut a Final Door" (for which he won the O. Henry Award in 1948, at the age of 24). His stories were published in both literary quarterlies and well-known popular magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, and Story. In June 1945, "Miriam" was published by Mademoiselle and went on to win a prize, Best First-Published Story, in 1946. In the spring of 1946, Capote was accepted at Yaddo, the artists and writers colony at Saratoga Springs, New York. (He later endorsed Patricia Highsmith as a Yaddo candidate, and she wrote Strangers on a Train while she was there.) During an interview for The Paris Review in 1957, Capote said this of his short story technique: Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: after reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it s.... Discover the Jenn Faulk popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jenn Faulk books.