American poet and writer, several of whose short stories were filmed. The son of a U.S. Army officer who inculcated in Benet and his brother, famed poet William Rose Benet, an appreciation for excellence in literature, Benet was raised around military posts. He attended Yale University, then traveled to Paris, where he met his wife, Rosemary Carr, and began to write professionally. While in Paris again on a Guggenheim Fellowship, he published the story, The Sobbin Women, which later became the basis for the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his narrative poem on the American Civil War, "John Brown's Body." He also wrote numerous radio dramas and a few screenplays before his early death at 44.