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E. L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (born January 6, 1931, New York, New York) is a writer who has written several critically aclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. He is the current Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University.

Works include:

• Welcome to Hard Times (1960).
• The Book of Daniel (1971). Nominated for a National Book Award, it fictionalized the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
• Ragtime (1975). After receiving the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and the Arts and Letters Award, it was transformed into a film in 1980 and a musical in 1998.
• Loon Lake (1980)
• Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella (1984)
• World's Fair. Received the 1986 National Book Award.
• Billy Bathgate (1989), which was made into a major motion picture in 1991.

After graduating from Kenyon College in the class of 1953, he was senior editor for New American Library in the early 1960s and for Dial Press from 1964 to 1969..

One of his short stories, "Walter John Harmon," about the cult of the cuckolding religious leader Walter John Harmon, appeared in The New Yorker, May 12, 2003.

Known for being politically outspoken, Doctorow was assailed for delivering a commencement address critical of President George W. Bush at Hofstra University on May 23, 2004.