David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. He was widely regarded as one of the most innovative literary voices of his generation. Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. His posthumous novel, The Pale King (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012.

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, and raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He attended Amherst College and the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he earned his MFA. He taught English at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College.

After struggling with depression for many years, Wallace died by suicide in 2008, at the age of 46. David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years."