James Agee, American writer and poet, 1909-1955. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Agee is probably best known for his journalistic 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which he and photographer Walker Evans documented the hardships of sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Agee's father died in an automobile accident when Agee was a child. His fictionalized account of that event, A Death in the Family (1957), was published posthumously and won the Pulitzer Prize. Agee wrote in several other genres including short fiction, poetry, screenplays, and film criticism.