How To Draw Robots

Author, editor, and professor, John Edward Williams (1922-1994) wrote four novels: Nothing, but The Night (1948), Butcher Crossing (1960), Stoner (1965) and Augustus (1972), the last of which received the National Book Award.
Grandson of farmers, he was raised in Texas and worked in radio and newspapers until enlisting in the air force in 1942. He was stationed in India and Burma until the end of World War II, a period in which he wrote his first novel.
He studied at the University of Denver and completed his doctorate in English Literature at the University of Missouri. He would return to Denver, where he combined academic activity with literature, until he retired in 1985.
He died in 1994, leaving a fifth novel unfinished.