{ Happy Birthday } ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Brush and ink portrait of American author Kurt Vonnegut, which was originally published in the Ottawa Citizen, for his birthday.

Vonnegut used science fiction as a means to satirize and critique.  His experience during the Second World War as an American POW during the firebombing of Dresden left an indelible mark on him.  It was the subject matter for arguably his most famous novel "Slaughterhouse Five".

He was awarded the Purple Heart upon his return to America but his experience made him a committed pacifist and humanist.

He was dubbed "the 'counterculture's novelist" by the New York Times in a headline marking his death in 2007.