Leon Forrest

His four major novels used mythology, history, and humor to explore "Forest County," a fictional world that resembled the south side of Chicago where Forrest grew up.

Nobel Prize Laureate Toni Morrison served as Forrest's editor for There is a Tree More Ancient than Eden, and his next two novels, The Bloodworth Orphans and Two Wings to Veil My Face.

[6] He cited Charlie Parker, Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, Ralph Ellison, and his parents' religions as inspirations.

[8] A novel over 1,100 pages long, Divine Days was called "the War and Peace of African-American literature" by noted scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

[6] Meteor in the Madhouse, a series of connected novellas, was published posthumously in 2001, with his widow Marianne Forrest serving as literary executor.