Pulitzer Prize Winner Creates Historical Spy Series
Literary fiction writer Robert Olen Butler is best known for the novel, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Butler has also written a series of historical spy novels, the Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thrillers, about an American spy during World War I. Butler is said to have gotten much of his literary inspiration from his own life. Like his hero, Christopher Marlowe Cobb, Butler has a parent who was an actor. Also like Cobb, Butler served in military intelligence--during the Vietnam War.
Butler is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University.
Butler was recently elected Mayor of Capps, Florida, which has a population of one.
Awards
Butler is the recipient of many awards for fiction including: The Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters two National Magazine Awards and two Pushcart Prizes. He was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.