Thornton Niven Wilder was born on April 17, 1897, in Madison, Wisconsin. His parents, Amos and Isabella Wilder, instilled deep religious, moral, and conservative values into all of their children. When Wilder was nine, his family moved to Hong Kong because his father had been appointed the American Consul General. After six months Isabella and the rest of the children moved back to America. After high school, Wilder went to Oberlin College for two years and then to Yale University, from which he was graduated in 1920 with a degree in classical literature. Wilder enlisted in the Coast Artillery Corps during WWI for eight months. He then went on to several other colleges before finally earning Master's degree in English from Princeton University, in 1926.

Wilder wrote seven novels, three full-length plays (Our Town, The Skin of our Teeth, and The Matchmaker) as well as other, smaller works including numerous one-act plays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for both Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. In 1965 he was the first American to receive the National Medal for Literature. Ten years later, on December 7, 1975, Wilder died in his sleep while visiting his sister in Hamden, CT.

Wilder will be remembered for his experimental style of playwriting. He would include characters that were unconventional for the time, such as The Stage Manager in Our Town, who would narrate the play and interact with the audience. His plays required little scenery and he would often experiment with the flow of time in his plays.