Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, N.J. Mailer grew up in Brooklyn and began attending Harvard University in 1939, it was while at university that he became interested in writing, he published his first story when he was 18. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1943. Drafted into the army in 1944, he served in the Philippines, as a rifleman in a reconnaissance outfit with the Twelfth Armoured Cavalry regiment from Texas until 1946.