David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an award-winning American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest,[4][5] which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923–2006).[6]