Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel was an American writer, broadcaster, historian, and actor born in New York City and raised in Chicago. He started in radio with the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project, where he announced news and sports, voiced soap operas, and wrote scripts and advertisements. In the late 1940s he voiced characters on Destination Freedom, and he was the central figure of the unscripted television drama Studs' Place. From 1952 to 1997 he hosted a weekday program on WFMT Chicago, The Studs Terkel Program, interviewing guests. His first book, Giants of Jazz, appeared in 1956. His oral history Division Street: America followed in 1967. The Good War earned him the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. His 1974 book Working was staged on Broadway in 1978 and shown on PBS in 1982. He played reporter Hugh Fullerton in Eight Men Out (1988). Other honors included the George Polk Career Award in 1999.