Keyes has received science fiction and mystery awards for his work, including the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards.
Flowers for Algernon remains his calling card, termed by Joseph McLellan of the
Washington Post Book World "one of the most memorable novels of the 1960s."
Keyes is a Brooklyn native, born August 9, 1927. After a public school education, he joined the U.S. Maritime Service, where he worked as ship's purser on oil tankers. In 1947, he enrolled in Brooklyn College, earning a B.A. in psychology in 1950. For a short period, Keyes worked in magazine publishing in New York. As he reported in Something About the Author (SATA), "here I began to learn the craft of writing." He tried fashion photography for a while, but eventually wound up in academia. In SATA, he said he found himself "coming full circle to teach at the high school from which I had graduated ten years earlier." In addition to his daytime job, Keyes earned a Master's degree in English and American literature at night, and he used the weekends to write.
One of Keyes's first stories was the original version of Flowers for Algernon, which was published in 1959 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
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