Leonard Bishop (October 17, 1922 – December 20, 2002) was an American novelist, writing teacher, and newspaper columnist.
[2] He has worked alongside other famous authors such as Mario Puzo, William Styron, Joseph Heller, Richard Wright, and Harlan Ellison.
He was raised in extreme poverty, spending a year with his older brother, Bernard, in a Catholic orphanage because his mother, Esther, couldn't support them.
[4] Meanwhile, his father was a criminal, a heroin addict, and a wife beater who spent time in various prisons around New York and New Jersey.
[4] Leonard later wrote “I was deeply shocked, not because he was trying to kill my mother (he had tried it several times before) but because I could see myself ten years from now, standing inside my father's skin.”[4] In 1952 his first novel Down All Your Streets was published.
He soon caught pneumonia and on December 19, 2002, at the Mercy Regional Health Center in Manhattan, Kansas he died at the age of 80.
He wrote ““I was no longer a low bum, a hobo, a loser, I had faced the challenge of Opportunity and dared to claim it for my life.”[4]