Cormac McCarthy was an American author known for his novels spanning the Western, postapocalyptic, and Southern Gothic genres. Born as Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island, he was primarily raised in Tennessee. In 1951, he enrolled in the University of Tennessee, but left to join the U.S. Air Force. His debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965.

McCarthy received several literary grants, allowing him to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark (1968). Although his early work, including Suttree (1979), was well-received critically, it wasn't until All the Pretty Horses (1992) that McCarthy achieved widespread acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He continued this success with novels like No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006), the latter of which earned him the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Many of McCarthy's works have been adapted into films, notably No Country for Old Men, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In addition to his fiction, McCarthy was involved with the Santa Fe Institute, publishing the essay "The Kekulé Problem" in 2017, and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2012. His final novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, were published in 2022.

McCarthy passed away on June 13, 2023, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary American writers, with critics like Harold Bloom considering him among the top novelists of his time.