One of the most neglected of modern American authors and also one of the best loved, NELSON ALGREN (1909-1981) believed that "literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity." Recipient of the first National Book Award for Fiction and lauded by Hemingway as "one of the two best authors in America," Algren remains among the most defiant and enduring novelists. His work includes five major novels, including Somebody in Boots (1935), Never Come Morning (1945), The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), two short fiction collections, The Neon Wilderness (1947) and The Last Carousel (1973), a book-length prose-poem, Chicago: City on the Make (1951), and several collections of reportage. Algren died on May 9, 1981, within days of his appointment as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

COLIN ASHER is the author of Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren (W.W. Norton, 2019), a literary biography written as a work of creative nonfiction. His writing has appeared in The Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, and many other publications.