Henry Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany on Aug. 16, 1920. In 1923, the family came to the United States, eventually moving west to settle in Los Angeles in 1930.
He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1938, and attended Los Angeles City College with the idea of becoming a journalist or a writer. He began writing poetry and fiction in earnest during this period, selling his first short story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip," to Story magazine, where it was published in the March/April 1943 issue.
He eventually grew disillusioned with his lack of success as a writer, and began to drift into the vagabond existence that would form the source material for many of his later works.
His extensive writings on the down-and-out side of life arose out of his own experiences. During the period from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, he worked in an auto parts factory, a picture frame factory, a tool warehouse, a lighting company and a department store called Milliron's, which later became The Broadway.

In 1952, he started work as  a substitute postal carrier. He would work off and on for the post office through the 1960s. His experiences there inspired his first novel, Post Office (1969), a realistic look at life in a grinding, humdrum job that became one of his most popular and enduring works.