Creator of so many good stories, writer William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), born in Greensboro, North Carolina, became known as O. Henry, the quiet craftsman of the short story. As a curious child, he played a simple storytelling game with his sister Evelina. She would begin a story, then invite him to imagine its ending.

He moved to Texas in 1882, where his early work as a pharmacist, ranch hand, and bank teller quietly inspired the poor working people who later found a home in his fiction. From drugstore counters to dusty streets, he watched how people lived and listened to how they spoke, saving their voices for the stories he hoped to write.

“Life is made of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating,” he wrote. He knew something of hardship, yet he met it with humor and tenderness, shaping everyday struggles into tales that felt honest and bright.

O. Henry’s stories carried sentiment, quiet warmth, and gentle twists. An economical writer, he set the scene with care and moved with purpose, guiding readers toward an ending that felt both surprising and true.

One of his most beloved tales, The Gift of the Magi, turns toward true love and the spirit of giving. Told in the voice of a friendly narrator, the story follows Della and Jim Young, a couple with little money and steady devotion. Each chooses to sacrifice a treasured possession to buy the other a Yuletide gift. Della cuts her glorious hair to buy Jim a chain for his heirloom watch. Jim sells the watch to buy combs for her vanished curls. The ending feels softly comic and deeply satisfying, a reminder of how love reveals itself in small, sincere acts.

In 1960, Pulitzer Prize winner William Saroyan reflected, “The people of America loved O. Henry... He was a nobody, but he was a nobody who also was a somebody, everybody’s somebody.” His stories, filled with clerks and waitresses and dreamers, offered ordinary people the grace of being noticed.

A skilled and inventive craftsman, O. Henry wrote more than 300 short stories. In 1918, The O. Henry Awards were first compiled as “a monument to O. Henry’s genius.” Through the years, the collection has honored writers such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and many others. The awards continue to honor the finest stories published in American and Canadian magazines, carrying his name forward each time a new writer finds a voice.