Owen Wister, American lawyer and author (born 1860)

Owen Wister was an American writer. His novel The Virginian, published in 1902, helped create the cowboy as a folk hero in the United States and built Wister's reputation as the "father of Western fiction". He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. The Western Writers of America renamed the Saddleman Award for best book of the year to the Owen Wister Award, and Mount Wister in Wyoming was named in his honor.

July 21 is the 202nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 163 days remain until the end of the year.