American anti-war novelist and satirist Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ’44 was born in Indianapolis on Armistice Day, November 11, 1922, almost prophetic for the anti-war author. Even in high school, Vonnegut was an adept writer, earning an editorship that helped land him at Cornell University. As a student at Cornell, he served as The Sun’s associate editor in his second year before nearly being asked by Cornell to leave because of his lackluster academic performance.

Vonnegut then chose to enlist in the United States Army in 1942 to fight in World War II. Captured in the Battle of the Bulge by the Germans near the end of 1944, he remained a prisoner of war for several months until the Russian army found and released him. During his imprisonment, he witnessed the Dresden fire-bombing, an incident just as horrific as the Hiroshima bombing but not well-known until Vonnegut wrote what is considered his greatest and most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, and informed the world of the incident. Upon Vonnegut’s return to the U.S., he was awarded a Purple Heart.

Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969, showcases the fractured life of an American soldier named Billy Pilgrim who, as a result of witnessing the Dresden fire-bombing and surviving the war, undergoes severe mental trauma. Vonnegut utilizes time and space travel within the book to make a profound point about the effects of war on the individual, including frequently injecting the phrase “so it goes” immediately after a “death” within the plot to portray an emotionally satirical approach to death. The protagonist, interestingly enough, lives in Ithaca, New York for much of his time on planet Earth.

Vonnegut published his first short story, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” in 1950 and his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. For the next several years, Vonnegut published The Siren of Titans, Canary in a Cat House, Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, among other fictional books and short stories. Kilgore Trout, a recurring character in a number of Vonnegut’s novels, is suspected by literary audiences to be Vonnegut’s alter ego.

In 1967, Vonnegut was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship that allowed him to begin work on Slaughterhouse-Five. In 1970, he was awarded a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant, and five years later, elected to be its vice president.

Since his fame after publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut has been asked to serve as professor at a number of prestigious universities around the country, while several of his novels have been selected for what became award-winning movie and television adaptations.

Vonnegut was most recently named the New York State author from 2001 to 2003. He has continued to publish a number of novels, stories and essays throughout the years.

More recently, Vonnegut has been recognized for his work as a graphic artist, a career which arguably began with the famous “serenity prayer” on a locket between an actress’s breasts in Slaughterhouse-Five. His works as a graphic artist include using felt-tip pens and silk-screen prints to illustrate, among other things, scenes and characters from his novels.