Nelson Algren (March 28, 1909 - May 9, 1981) was an American writer.

Early life
He wrote his first story, So Help Me, in 1933, while he was in Texas working at a gas station. Before returning home, he was caught stealing a typewriter from an abandoned classroom. For this, he spent nearly five months behind bars and faced a possible three additional years in jail. Fortunately for Algren, he was released, but the incident made a deep impression on him. It deepened his identification with outsiders, has-beens, and the general failures who later populated his fictional world.
His first novel, Somebody in Boots, was published in 1935. Never Come Morning, published in 1942, portrayed the dead-end life of a doomed young criminal.
He served as a private in the European Theater of WWII as a litter bearer. Despite being a college graduate, he was denied entry into Officer Candidate School. There is conjecture that this may have been due to suspicion regarding Algren's political beliefs.
He articulated the world of "drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts, prize fighters, corrupt politicians, and hoodlums". He is probably best known for his 1950 National Book Award winning The Man With the Golden Arm. His next book, Chicago, City on the Make (1951), was a scathing essay that outraged the city's boosters but beautifully presented the back alleys of the town, its dispossessed, its corrupt politicians and its swindlers.
In the fall of 1954, Algren was interviewed for the Paris Review by rising author Terry Southern. Algren and Southern became friends through this meeting and remained in touch for many years. Algren became one of Southern's most enthusiastic early supporters, and when he taught creative writing in later years he often used Southern as an example of a great short story writer.
In 1994 the book Nonconformity was published. It presented Algren's side of the debacle that was the 1956 film adaptation of The Man With the Golden Arm. Nonconformity also expresses the belief system behind Algren's writing, not to mention a call to writers everywhere to investigate the dark and represent the ignored.

Personal life
According to Herbert Mitgang, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation did not like Algren's political views and kept a dossier on him amounting to more than 500 pages, but identified nothing concretely subversive.

FBI surveillance
Algren's last Chicago residence, 1958 West Evergreen Street, was a walk-up apartment just east of Damen Avenue in West Town, an area dominated by Polish immigrants and once one of Chicago's toughest and most crowded slums. Shortly after his death, West Evergreen Street was renamed West Algren Street. The change caused controversy and was almost immediately changed back.. The area is now a gentrified, popular nightlife district.

Street naming controversy
In the 2001 documentary Classic Albums: Lou Reed: Transformer, musician Lou Reed says that Algren's 1956 novel, A Walk on the Wild Side, was the launching point for his song of the same name.
The liner notes of The Tubes' 1976 album Young and Rich also credit the novel as the inspiration for their song Pimp.
The 2002 album Adult World by guitarist Wayne Kramer (founding member of the Detroit band MC5) contains a song entitled Nelson Algren Stopped By, in which guest band X-Mars-X provides a shuffling jazz background while Kramer reads a prose poem about walking the streets of present-day Chicago with Algren.
The Minnesota based punk-rock band Dillinger Four quotes Algren as an inspiration in the song Doublewhiskeycokenoice from their album Midwestern Songs of the Americas. In that song Erik Funk sings "Nelson Algren came to me and said, 'Celebrate the ugly things' / The beat-up side of what they call pride could be the measure of these days."
In 2005 The Hold Steady mentioned Algren in the song Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night from the Separation Sunday album. The first line of the song is "Nelson Algren came to Paddy at some party at the Dead End Alley/He told him what to celebrate" and towards the end the song goes "Hey Nelson Algren. Chicago seemed tired last nite/They had cigarettes where there were supposed to be eyes." The name "Paddy" in the song is a reference to Patrick Costello and the "Dead End Alley" is the name of the house where the Dillinger Four's members used to live.
The Chicago-based band Sundowner quotes Algren in the liner notes of the album Four One Five Two (2007).

Quotes

Somebody in Boots (1935)
Never Come Morning (1942)
The Neon Wilderness (1947), a collection of short stories
The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), concerns morphine addiction
Chicago: City on the Make (1951)
A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Nelson Algren's Own Book of Lonesome Monsters (1962)
Who Lost an American? (1963)
Conversations with Nelson Algren (1964)
Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way (1965)
The Last Carousel (1973)
The Devil's Stocking (1983)
America Eats (1992)
He Swung and He Missed (1993)
Nonconformity (1994)
The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren (1994)