Sinclair Lewis, 1885-1951, was a writer known for his short stories and novels. He was born on February 7, 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He received his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1907, and his first publications appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine. He also worked as a janitor in Upton Sinclair's Helicon Home Colony from 1906 to 1907, where he met Edith Summers Kelley. His first novel, Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, was published in 1914, but he would not attain widespread success until the publication of his novel Main Street in 1920. Throughout the 1920's Lewis published several novels satirizing various aspects of American life, including Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), and Dodsworth (1929). In 1930, he became the first American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He continued to write novels, most memorably It Can't Happen Here (1935), a speculative exploration of a fascist takeover of the United States, but his reputation and the quality of his work began to decline. Lewis struggled with alcoholism throughout the latter portion of his life, and he died from it on January 10, 1951.

Edith Summers Kelley, 1883-1956, was a novelist and secretary of Upton Sinclair at the Helicon Home Colony, Englewood, New Jersey. She was born on April 28, 1884 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1903, she moved to New York City and settled in Greenwich Village to begin her career as a writer. In 1905 she became Upton Sinclair's secretary and joined his experimental community, the Helicon Home Colony, when it was established in 1906. The building that housed the community burned down in 1907, and Kelley returned to supporting herself by writing stories and poems for magazines. She and Sinclair Lewis, whom she met at the colony, were engaged for two years, but Kelley broke the engagement. She chose instead to marry Lewis' roommate Allan Updegraff in 1908. They had two children before divorcing. Kelly then began a relationship with sculptor Clyde Fred Kelley, and the family eventually moved to a tobacco farm in Scott County, Kentucky. This experience provided the inspiration for Edith Kelley's novel Weeds (1923). The family moved again to Imperial Valley, California, where Kelley spent the remaining years of her life. Her second novel, The Devil's Hand, remained unpublished when she died on June 9, 1956.