William Fifield was a noted author of both fiction and nonfiction. He won an O.Henry short-story prize in 1942, and published In Search of Genius, a collection of interviews with people he considered geniuses, including Picasso, Cocteau, Miro, Dali and Robert Graves, He also published The Devil's Marchioness, a novel based on the life of a notorious seventeenth-century poisoner, the Marquise de Brinvilliers; The Sign of Taurus, a novel set in Mexico about a Jewish refugee; Modigliani, a biography with interviews with members of the artist's family. He also recorded conversations with such luminaries as Marcel Marceau and famed French artist Jean Cocteau, and wrote extensively for publication in magazines such as Harpers. He also wrote about 130 radio and television plays.

Born in Chicago in 1916, Mr. Fifield was raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Seattle, Washington. He was a magna cum laude graduate of Whitman College in 1937, serving as student body president and he won honors in extemporaneous speaking. While working in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he began publishing short stories in national magazines. In 1950, he moved to Europe to become a full-time writer, and lived there for nearly forty years. He died in 1987 at the age of 71.