born Feb. 3, 1907?, New York, N.Y., U.S.
died Oct. 16, 1997, Austin, Texas
U.S. novelist and short-story writer.
Michener was a foundling discovered in Doylestown, Pa., and he was raised as a Quaker. From 1944 to 1946 he was a naval historian in the South Pacific, the setting of his early fiction; his Tales of the South Pacific (1947, Pulitzer Prize) was adapted as the Broadway musical South Pacific (1949; film, 1958). He is best known for epic and detailed novels drawing on extensive research, including Hawaii (1959; film, 1966), Iberia (1968), Centennial (1974), Chesapeake (1978), Space (1982), and Mexico (1992).