David Foster Wallace

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<DIV><B>David Foster Wallace</B> was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, <I>The Broom of the System</I>, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, <I>Infinite Jest</I>, was published in 1996. <br><br> Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections <I>Girl with Curious Hair</I>, <I>Brief Interviews with Hideous Men</I>, <I>Oblivion</I>, the essay collections <I>A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again</I>, and <I>Consider the Lobster</I>. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, <I>The Pale King</I>, was published in 2011.</DIV>