William Saroyan (August 31, 1908 - May 18, 1981) was an American author who wrote many plays and short stories about growing up impoverished as the son of Armenian immigrants. These stories were popular during the Great Depression. Saroyan grew up in Fresno, the center of Armenian-Americans in California, where many of his works are set (although he sometimes gave the city a fictional name). Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for William Saroyan. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Saroyan
...Welcome to the William Saroyan Page Three times in my life I have been captured: by the orphanage, by school, and by the Army. I was four years in the orphanage, seven or ... www.electroasylum.com/saroyan/
Several of Saroyan's works were drawn from his own experiences, although his approach to autobiographical facts can be called poetic. www.kirjasto.sci.fi/saroyan.htm