Vern Sneider
Vernon J. Sneider was an American novelist perhaps most noted for his 1951 novel The Teahouse of the August Moon, which was later adapted by John Patrick for a Broadway play in 1953, a motion picture in 1956, and the Broadway musical Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen in 1970. The play The Teahouse of the August Moon won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1954. His novel A Pail of Oysters, about life during the White Terror by Chinese Nationalists regime in Taiwan, was reissued by Camphor Press on February 28, 2016, the 69th anniversary of the 1947 2-28 Incident.
He was born and died in Monroe, Michigan. He was the son of Fred Sneider and Matilda D. Althaver Sneider. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 1940, he entered the Army. He was a member of a military government team that landed in Okinawa in April 1945. There he became commander of Tobaru, a village of 5,000 people that became Tobiki Village in The Teahouse. He was married first to Barbara Lee Cook.
