Author. Isaac Bashevis Singer was born Icek-Hersz Zynger in Radzymin, near Warsaw, Poland, the son of a Hasidic rabbi and Bathsheba, the daughter of a rabbi. In 1920 Singer entered the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary for a short time. In 1923 he moved to Warsaw where he worked as a proofreader for the Literarische Bleter, a newspaper edited by his brother Israel. Singer also translated German thrillers and classic novels into Yiddish. From 1933 to 1935 he was an associate editor of Globus. His first novel, Satan in Goray, was published in Poland in 1932. In 1935 Singer moved to the United States and settled in New York where he worked for the Yiddish-language newspaper Forverts.  He became an American citizen in 1943. A collection of his stories in English, Gimpel the Fool, was published in 1957. In his career, Singer published 18 novels, 14 children’s books, a number of essays, articles, and reviews, but he was probably best-known as a short story writer. Although his works are best known in their English versions, he originally composed them in Yiddish. He was the only American author to write primarily in another language. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. (bio by: Iola)