Nelson Algren

2022 Illini Media Hall of Fame

27-04-2022 • 17分

Nelson Algren was an American author whose 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm won the National Book Award for Fiction and was later made into a movie, with protagonist Frankie Machine played by Frank Sinatra. Algren was born in 1909 in Detroit and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He was a reporter for The Daily Illini and graduated from Illinois in 1931, during the height of the Depression. Like many in that era, he struggled to find work--and began taking jobs anywhere and everywhere, including as a carnival worker and a coffee salesman. He was inducted into the Academy of Arts and Letters shortly before his death in 1981 at the age of 72.

WPGU Program Director J. Sidney Malone speaks with Daily Illini Investigative and Longform Editor JP Legarte, who wrote the profile of Algren for the Daily Illini to discuss his life and career.

Read the Daily Illini's profile of Nelson Algren here.

Produced by WPGU-FM 107.1