William Peter Blatty

William Peter Blatty (born January 7, 1928) is an American writer and filmmaker. The novel The Exorcist, written in 1971, is his magnum opus; he also penned the subsequent screenplay version of the film, for which he won an Academy Award. He also wrote and directed the sequel The Exorcist III: Legion. His most recent works include the novels Elsewhere (2009), Dimiter (2010) and Crazy (2010). He is also featured in the upcoming 2012 Smoke And Mirrors anthology, featuring the teleplay "Hell Hospital" and the treatment "Faith". Blatty was born in New York City, the son of Lebanese parents who came to America on a cattle boat, Mary (née Mouakad) and Peter Blatty, a cloth cutter in a garment factory. His father left home when William was three years old. Raised in what he described as "comfortable destitution" by his deeply religious Catholic mother, whose sole support came from peddling homemade quince jelly in the streets of New York (his mother once offered a jar of it to FDR when the President was cutting the ribbon for the Queens Midtown Tunnel, telling him, "For when you have company"), he lived at twenty-eight different addresses during his childhood due to constant evictions by