Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles, and is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually having over 60 books in print.

In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". Bukowski was born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany to Heinrich Bukowski and Katharina Fett. His mother was a native German who met his father, an American serviceman, after World War I had ended.

Bukowski's parents were Roman Catholic, and raised him in the Church. He was fond of claiming that he had been born out of wedlock, but Andernach records show that his parents were in fact married a month prior to his birth. After the collapse of the German economy following the First World War, the family moved to the United States in 1923, originally settling in Baltimore, Maryland.

To sound more American, Bukowski's parents began calling him "Henry" and altered the pronunciation of the family name from Buk-ov-ski to Buk-cow-ski (the name is of Polish origin). After saving money, the family moved to southern Los Angeles in 1930, where his father's family lived. During Bukowski's childhood, his father was often unemployed, and Bukowski claimed that his father was a violent alcoholic, later described in his novel Ham on Rye.

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