Walker Percy est né le 28 mai 1916 dans l'Alabama, États-Unis. Il était scénariste. Il est connu pour The Moviegoer, The Second Coming et Lancelot. Il est mort le 10 mai 1990 aux États-Unis.
In 1976, seven years after the death of John Kennedy Toole, his mother gave a tattered carbon-copy of the manuscript of "Confederacy of Dunces" to Percy. It had been rejected by eight publishers, but he agreed to take a look at it. With his help, the quintessential New Orleans novel, with a foreword by Percy, was published in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.