John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. He is best known for the Rabbit series of novels, starting with Rabbit, Run, about the character of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. In the course of his career he published more than twenty novels and more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, plays, and a number of children's books. He is one of the very few writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, receiving it for both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.
A native of Shillington, Pennsylvania, Updike based the fictional Brewer (the setting of the Rabbit books) on his hometown and its surrounding Berks County region. His boyhood home on Philadelphia Avenue has been turned into a museum there, and received a historical marker from the commonwealth in 2021.note
