Ambrose Bierce was born in 1842 in Horse Crave Creek, Ohio. During the Civil War, he was recruited to the Union Army and fought in battles in West Virginia. He was discharged after suffering a head injury but later returned to the army, as the battles advanced west. As a journalist, an author, and a satiric, he was known as “bitter Bierce,” who famously held the notion that “nothing matters.” His most familiar work in prose is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” first published in 1980 and its short plot refers to the Civil War. Retrospectively, it can be identified as an early step toward the stream of consciousness technique, which later authors, such as Woolf and Joyce, developed. It had at least three movie adaptations over the years. In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico and has died, apparently, in 1914. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes based his short story “Gringo Viejo” on the circumstances of Bierce’s disappearance.
