Biography
Steve Tesich was a Serbian-American screenwriter, playwright and novelist. Born Stojan Tešić in Užice, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), he immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 14 and settled in Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 1965 and pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, where he began writing plays.
Tesich won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Breaking Away (1979). His other screenplays include Eyewitness (1981), The World According to Garp (1982) and American Flyers (1985). He also wrote the play Division Street, which opened on Broadway in 1980. Tesich died of a heart attack on 1 July 1996 while on holiday in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada.
