Charles Portis lives in Arkansas, where he was born (1933) and educated. Portis served as a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune and was also its London bureau chief. His first novel, Norwood, was published in 1966. His other novels are True Grit, The Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis, and Gringos. True Grit has been made into a movie two times, once in 1969 with John Wayne (who won his only academy award by playing the main character of Rooster Cogburn), and a second time in 2010 with Jeff Bridges as the main character. Mr. Bridges was nominated for the Rooster Cogburn role, but did not win. Charles Portis died on February 17, 2020 in Little Rock, Arkansas at age 86. He had been under hospice care for two years.
Donna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi on December 23, 1963. She wrote her first novel while attending Bennington College, where she graduated in 1986. The novel, The Secret History, was published in 1992. Her other works include The Little Friend, which won the WH Smith Literary Award in 2003, and The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for Best Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013 and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence for Fiction. In 2014, Time named Tartt among their 100 Most Influential People.