born Oct. 4, 1884, Manhattan, Kan., U.S.
died Dec. 10, 1946, New York, N.Y.
U.S. journalist and short-story writer.
He served in the Spanish-American War as a teenager. After returning to the U.S. he wrote for newspapers in the West. In 1911 he moved to New York, where he developed a style focusing on the underside of city life and began to write stories. He is best known for Guys and Dolls (1931), a collection of stories about a racy section of Broadway written in the uniquely rendered slang that became his trademark and gave rise to the term Runyonesque ; the book was adapted as a musical by Frank Loesser (1950).