Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, John McPhee, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of narrative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, which superimposes the essay onto the nonfiction novel.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel The Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction as well as the National Book Award. Among his other well-known works are An American Dream (1965), The Fight (1975) and The Executioner's Song (1979), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer was a prominent cultural commentator and critic, expressing his often controversial views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances, and essays, the most famous of which is The White Negro.

In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York, finishing fourth in the Democratic primaries. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.