Louis L'Amour (March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was a American author of (primarily) Western fiction (see also Frontier, Western movie, and Wild West).
He was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore of French-Canadian background March 22, 1908 in the American state of North Dakota.
He was an avid reader as a child. In the early 1920's, his parents decided to pack up the family and find better economic conditions. When he was 15, he got separated from his family in the American southwest and began to work a string of diverse jobs, which gave him ideas for his fiction. He continued to be an itinerate worker, traveling the world, up to the start of WWII. In the 1930's he began to sell stories to pulp magazines. After serving in WWII, he continued to write stories for magazines. In the 1950's, he began to sell novels. He eventually wrote more than 100 novels, selling more than 225 million copies that were translated into dozens of languages and made into 30 motion pictures.
Many criticise the Western genre, but he considered himself "just a storyteller, a guy with a seat by the campfire," and at least once related that after he died, he only wanted to be remembered as a good storyteller. Given the fantastic success of his writings, the fate seems secure.
In 1982 he won the Congressional (National) Gold Medal, and in 1984 the Medal of Freedom.
Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988 and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
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