US Author Name
US Author / Writers Name
There is a great and proud tradition of American writers, including some of the world’s most famous authors. Novels, plays, and poems pour out of the United States, with increasing numbers of women,outsource companies, outsourcing, outsource, outsource definition, outsourcing definition, convergent outsourcing, software outsourcing companies, it outsourcing companies, African American, Native American, and Hispanic writers making a strong contribution. There have been twelve literature Nobel Prize laureates, beginning with Sinclair Lewis in 1930 to Bob Dylan, in 2016. Other American writers who were laureates include such household names as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck. American writers’ contribution to English literature is incalculable
The American literary tradition began when some of the early English colonists recounted their adventures in the New World for the benefit of readers in their mother country (see our list of the best English authors). Some of those early writings were quite accomplished, such as the account of his adventures by Captain John Smith in Virginia and the journalistic histories of John Winthrop and William Bradford in New England.
American Writers: 20 Greatest American Authors Of All Time
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804 – 1864
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a novelist and short story writer. Hawthorne’s works have been labelled ‘dark romanticism,’ dominated as they are by cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humankind. His novels and stories, set in a past New England, are versions of historical fiction used as a vehicle to express themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution
Edgar Allan Poe 1809 –1849
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and suspense. He is generally considered the inventor of detective ficiton. Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. In addition to his detective stories he is one of the originators of horror and science fiction. He is often credited as the architect of the modern short story…
Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
Herman Melville was an American writer of novels, short stories and poems. He is best known for the novel Moby-Dick and a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, Typee. His whaling novel, Moby-Dick is often spoken of as ‘the great American novel’ ’vying with Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for that title…
Walt Whitman 1819-1892
Walt Whitman was a poet, essayist, and journalist who transformed poetry around the world with his disregard for traditional rhyme and meter and his celebration of democracy and sensual pleasure. His masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, a collection of poems, is widely studied by poets, students and academics, set to music, translated into numerous languages, and is widely quoted. His influence can be found everywhere – in contemporary best seller lists to feature films and musical works, both “serious” and popular
Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
Unknown as a poet during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now regarded by many as one of the most powerful voices of American culture. Her poetry has inspired many other writers, including the Bronte's. In 1994 the critic, Harold Bloom, listed her among the twenty-six central writers of Western civilization. After she died her sister found the almost two thousand poems the poet had written…
Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , far better known as Mark Twain, was an American writer, businessman, publisher and lecturer. He progressed from his day job as pilot of a Mississippi riverboat to legend of American literature. His work shows a deep seriousness and at the same time, it is hilariously satirical, as seen in his many quotes on all aspects of life. His masterpiece is the novel, Huckleberry Finn, which is regularly referred to as ‘the great American novel.’
Henry James 1843 – 1916
Henry James is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He is noted for writing from a character’s point of view’ which allowed him to explore consciousness and perception. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators brought a new depth to narrative fiction, all of which were influential on the writing of the novelists who followed him. He was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature three times
T.S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born, British, poet, essayist, playwright, critic, now regarded as one of the twentieth century’s major poets. He received more rewards than almost any other writer of the past two centuries, including the Nobel prize, the Dante Gold Medal, the Goethe prize, the US Medal of Freedom and the British Order of Merit
F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896 – 1940
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist, widely regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, American writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel, The Great Gatsby, which vies for the title ‘Great American Novel’ with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Fitzgerald’s place on this list is justified by the fact that his great novel is actually about America…
William Faulkner 1897 –1962
William Cuthbert Faulkner was a Nobel Prize laureate, awarded the literature prize in 1949. He wrote novels, short stories, poetry, and screenplays. He is known mainly for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha Country, Mississippi. Faulkner is one of the most celebrated American writers, regarded, generally as the great writer of the American South
Tennessee Williams 1911-1983
Thomas Lanier Williams III, known as Tennessee Williams is one of America’s most popular playwrights and now regarded as one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. He wrote more than thirty plays, some of which have become classis of Western drama. He also wrote novels and short stories but is known almost exclusively for his plays. His genius was in the honesty with which he represented society and the art of presenting that in the form of absorbing drama
Arthur Miller 1915 – 2005
Arthur Miller was a playwright and ‘great man’ of American theatre, which he championed throughout his long life. His many dramas were among the most popular by American authors and several are considered to be among the best American plays, among them the classics, The Crucible, All My Sons, A View from the Bridge and, above all, the iconic American drama, Death of a Salesman. He also wrote film scripts, notably the classic, The Misfits…
Joseph Heller 1923 – 1999
Joseph Heller was an American writer of satirical novels, short stories and plays. Although he wrote several acclaimed novels, his reputation rests firmly on his masterpiece, the great American anti-war satire, Catch 22. Because of the quality of the novel and the impact it has made on American culture it has catapulted Heller into the ranks of the great American writers
Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
Ernest Hemingway was a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. More works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously
Raymond Chandler 1888 – 1959
Raymond Chandler was a British-American novelist who wrote several screenplays and short stories. He published seven novels during his lifetime. The first, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. An eighth, Poodle Springs, unfinished at his death, was completed by another great crime writer, Robert B Parker. Six of Chandler’s novels have been made into films, some more than once…
Toni Morrison 1931 – 2019
Toni Morrison’s novels are known for their vivid dialogue, their detailed characters and epic themes. Her most famous novel is the 1987 novel, Beloved. She was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993
Vladimir Nabokov 1899 – 1977
Vladi
mir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist, and also a famous entomologist, specializing in butterflies, a topic on which he wrote several academic books. He wrote nine novels in Russian, but it was when he began writing in English that he achieved international recognition
Flannery O’Connor 1925 – 1964
Mary Flannery O’Connor wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories, and also several reviews and commentaries. Her reputation is based mainly on her short stories. She was a Southern writer and relied heavily on regional settings and typically southern characters. She was strongly Roman Catholic, which informed her exploration of ethics and morality…
John Steinbeck 1902 – 1968
John Ernst Steinbeck was the author of 16 novels and various other works, including five short story collections. He is widely known for the novels, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, and particularly, the Puliter Prize winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, his masterpiece, which is one of the great American novels: it has sold more than 15 million copies so far
John Updike 1923 – 2009
John Updike was a novelist, short story writer and poet. He was also a literary and art critic. He published more than twenty novels, numerous short-story collections, eight volumes of poetry and many children’s books. He is most famous for his ‘Rabbit‘ series – novels that chronicle the life of his protagonist, Harry Angstrom – in which Updike presented his progress over the course of several decades
Kurt Vonnegut 1922 – 2007
Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer who published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his novel ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ (1969) which has become an American classic. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel based on his experience as a prisoner of war who survived the allies’ bombing of Dresden.
List of American writers
This list of American writers is alphabetically ordered by period. The term writers is broadly defined to include philosophers, scientists, cookbook writers, critics, journalists, sociologists, historians, and even explorers, as well as poets and novelists. This list is limited, however, to those writers springing from the European tradition, including the work of African American writers who were schooled in the United States and others who were not by definition U.S. citizens but who wrote works of importance to American culture or American literature. It should also be noted that writers who overlap two periods are usually listed within the period that they wrote their most representative works.
- Colonial era
- William Bradford
- Anne Bradstreet
- Thomas Harriot
- Increase Mather
- Cotton Mather
- Thomas Morton
- Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
- William Penn
- Samuel Sewall
- John Smith
- Edward Taylor
- Nathaniel Ward
- Michael Wigglesworth
- Roger Williams
- John Winthrop
- The 18th century
- Abigail Adams
- Hannah Adams
- John Adams
- Conrad Beissel
- Charles Brockden Brown
- William Hill Brown
- William Byrd
- Jonathan Carver
- Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur
- Joseph Dennie
- John Dickinson
- Joseph Rodman Drake
- Timothy Dwight
- Jonathan Edwards
- Olaudah Equiano
- Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson
- Hannah Webster Foster
- Benjamin Franklin
- Philip Freneau
- Samuel Griswold Goodrich
- Alexander Hamilton
- Samuel Hopkins
- Thomas Jefferson
- Sarah Kemble Knight
- Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton
- Judith Sargent Stevens Murray
- Thomas Paine
- Edward Taylor
- Lucy Terry
- John Trumbull
- Royall Tyler
- Mercy Otis Warren
- Phillis Wheatley
- John Woolman
The early 19th century to the end of the American Civil War
- Jacob Abbott
- Bronson Alcott
- Delia Salter Bacon
- Robert Montgomery Bird
- Black Hawk
- Maria Gowen Brooks
- John Brougham
- William Wells Brown
- William Cullen Bryant
- Anna Ella Carroll
- Alice Cary
- Phoebe Cary
- William Ellery Channing
- Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut
- Lydia Maria Child
- Ada Clare
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Maria Susanna Cummins
- George William Curtis
- Richard Henry Dana
- Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis
- Martin R. Delany
- David Dickson
- Frederick Douglass
- Mary Henderson Eastman
- Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Margaret Fuller
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Caroline Howard Gilman
- Angelina Emily Grimké
- James Hall
- Fitz-Greene Halleck
- Frances E.W. Harper
- George Washington Harris
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- George Moses Horton
- Washington Irving
- Harriet A. Jacobs
- John P. Kennedy
- Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
- Abraham Lincoln
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Herman Melville
- Adah Isaacs Menken
- Harriet Mann Miller
- Donald Grant Mitchell
- Clement Clarke Moore
- Anna Cora Mowatt
- Mary Gove Nichols
- Solomon Northup
- Fitz-James O’Brien
- Francis Parkman
- Sara Payson Willis Parton
- James Kirke Paulding
- John Howard Payne
- Mary Hayden Green Pike
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Catharine Maria Sedgwick
- L.H. Sigourney
- William Gilmore Simms
- Seba Smith
- Ann Sophia Stephens
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Henry David Thoreau
- Henry Timrod
- Sojourner Truth
- Jones Very
- David Walker
- Mason Locke Weems
- Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher
- Sarah Helen Power Whitman
- Walt Whitman
- John Greenleaf Whittier
- David Wilson
- Harriet E. Wilson
The end of the Civil War to World War I
- Charles Follen Adams
- Henry Adams
- William Taylor Adams
- Louisa May Alcott
- Isabella Macdonald Alden
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich
- Francesca Alexander
- Horatio Alger
- Elizabeth Anne Chase Akers Allen
- Mary Austin
- Joel Barlow
- Katharine Lee Bates
- L. Frank Baum
- Clifford Whittingham Beers
- Ethel Lynn Beers
- David Belasco
- Edward Bellamy
- Ambrose Bierce
- Lillie Devereux Blake
- Dion Boucicault
- Randolph Silliman Bourne
- Hugh Henry Brackenridge
- Gamaliel Bradford
- Alice Brown
- Orestes Augustus Brownson
- Henry Cuyler Bunner
- Frances Hodgson Burnett
- John Burroughs
- George W. Cable
- Abraham Cahan
- Charles W. Chesnutt
- Kate Chopin
- Winston Churchill
- James Freeman Clarke
- Rebecca Sophia Clarke
- Florence Van Leer Earle Nicholson Coates
- Frank Moore Colby
- Moncure Daniel Conway
- Rose Terry Cooke
- Ina Donna Coolbrith
- Anna Julia Cooper
- Stephen Crane
- Adelaide Crapsey
- F. Marion Crawford
- Fanny Crosby
- Augustin Daly
- Flora Adams Darling
- Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis
- Richard Harding Davis
- John William DeForest
- Emily Dickinson
- Mary Abigail Dodge
- Mary Mapes Dodge
- Ignatius Donnelly
- Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr
- Theodore Dreiser
- W.E.B. Du Bois
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Edward Eggleston
- Ernest F. Fenollosa
- Eugene Field
- James T. Fields
- Martha Finley
- Harrison Grey Fiske
- Clyde Fitch
- Mary Anna Hallock Foote
- Harold Frederic
- Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
- Jessie Ann Benton Frémont
- Helen Hamilton Gardener
- Hamlin Garland
- Jeannette Leonard Gilder
- William Hooker Gillette
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Avrom Goldfaden
- Anna Katharine Green
- Charlotte Forten Grimké
- Louise Imogen Guiney
- Edward Everett Hale
- Lucretia Peabody Hale
- Sarah Josepha Hale
- Frances E.W. Harper
- Ida A. Husted Harper
- Edward Harrigan
- Joel Chandler Harris
- Bret Harte
- John Hay
- Paul Hamilton Hayne
- Lafcadio Hearn
- O. Henry
- James A. Herne
- Marietta Holley
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Pauline Hopkins
- Richard Hovey
- Bronson Howard
- Julia Ward Howe
- William Dean llowells
- Elbert Hubbard
- Helen Hunt Jackson
- Henry James
- Sarah Orne Jewett
- James Weldon Johnson
- E.Z.C. Judson
- John La Farge
- Sidney Lanier
- Emma Lazarus
- Homer Lea
- Charles Godfrey Leland
- Jack London
- James Russell Lowell
- Steele MacKaye
- Helen Marot
- Brander Matthews
- George Barr McCutcheon
- Joaquin Miller
- S. Weir Mitchell
- William Vaughn Moody
- Julia A. Moore
- Margaret Warner Morley
- Ellen Louise Chandler Moulton
- Mary Noailles Murfree
- Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson
- Frank Norris
- Thomas Nelson Page
- Joseph Pennell
- Nora Perry
- Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
- Maria Louise Pool
- Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
- Howard Pyle
- Opie Read
- James Whitcomb Riley
- Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson
- O.E. Rölvaag
- Susanna Rowson
- Edgar Evertson Saltus
- Benjamin Sanborn
- Margaret Elizabeth Munson Sangster
- William Gilmore Simms
- Hannah Whitall Smith
- Emma Southworth
- Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford
- Edmund Clarence Stedman
- Frank Richard Stockton
- Richard Henry Stoddard
- Ida M. Tarbell
- Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune
- Celia Laighton Thaxter
- Augustus Thomas
- Rose Alnora Hartwick Thorpe
- Thomas B. Thorpe
- Mabel Loomis Todd
- Kate Nichols Trask
- Frederick Jackson Turner
- Mark Twain
- Mariana Alley Griswold Van Rensselaer
- Frances Auretta Fuller Victor
- Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
- Lewis Wallace
- Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
- Susan Bogert Warner and Anna Bartlett Warner
- Booker T. Washington
- Jean Webster
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett
- Edward Noyes Westcott
- Edith Wharton
- Walt Whitman
- Adeline Dutton Train Whitney
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
- Owen Wister
- Sarah Chauncey Woolsey
- Constance Fenimore Woolson
- Zitkala-Sa
From World War I to the end of World War II
- Louis Adamic
- Charles Follen Adams
- Franklin Pierce Adams
- Hannah Adams
- Léonie Adams
- Samuel Hopkins Adams
- George Ade
- Conrad Aiken
- Maxwell Anderson
- Regina M. Anderson
- Sherwood Anderson
- Katharine Anthony
- Gertrude Atherton
- Joseph Auslander
- Irving Babbitt
- Irving Bacheller
- Ray Stannard Baker
- Faith Baldwin
- Djuna Barnes
- Philip Barry
- Vicki Baum
- Sylvia Beach
- S.N. Behrman
- Robert Benchley
- Stephen Vincent Benét
- Gwendolyn Bennett
- Aline Frankau Bernstein
- Albert J. Beveridge
- Earl Derr Biggers
- John Peale Bishop
- Marc Blitzstein
- Maxwell Bodenheim
- Arna Bontemps
- Louis Bromfield
- Cleanth Brooks
- Van Wyck Brooks
- Margaret Wise Brown
- Gelett Burgess
- Thornton W. Burgess
- Kenneth Burke
- Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Virginia Lee Burton
- James Branch Cabell
- W.J. Cash
- Willa Cather
- Raymond Chandler
- John Jay Chapman
- Leslie Charteris
- Mary Ellen Chase
- Irvin S. Cobb
- Robert P. Tristram Coffin
- George M. Cohan
- Marc Connelly
- Jack Conroy
- Jane Cowl
- Malcolm Cowley
- George Cram
- Hart Crane
- Frank Craven
- Harry Crosby
- Rachel Crothers
- Countee Cullen
- E.E. Cummings
- Ève Curie
- Donald Davidson
- H.L. Davis
- Margaret Deland
- Floyd Dell
- Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)
- John Dos Passos
- Ruth Draper
- Theodore Dreiser
- Alice Dunbar Nelson
- Fannie Pearson Hardy Eckstorm
- T.S. Eliot
- John Erskine
- James T. Farrell
- William Faulkner
- Jessie Redmon Fauset
- Kenneth Fearing
- Edna Ferber
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- Rudolph Fisher
- Dudley Fitts
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Douglas Southall Freeman
- Robert Frost
- Henry Blake Fuller
- Wanda Hazel Gág
- Zona Gale
- Erle Stanley Gardner
- Howard R. Garis
- Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould
- Ira Gershwin
- Khalil Gibran
- Ellen Glasgow
- Susan Glaspell
- Zane Grey
- Angelina Weld Grimké
- Edgar A. Guest
- Louise Closser Hale
- Moyshe Leyb Halpern
- Moss Hart
- Lillian Hellman
- Ernest Hemingway
- Joseph Hergesheimer
- DuBose Heyward
- Granville Hicks
- Ralph Hodgson
- Sidney Howard
- E.W. Howe
- Langston Hughes
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Robinson Jeffers
- James Weldon Johnson
- Osa Johnson
- George S. Kaufman
- George Kelly
- Joyce Kilmer
- George Lyman Kittredge
- Oliver La Farge
- Ring Lardner
- Nella Larsen
- Meridel Le Sueur
- Sinclair Lewis
- Vachel Lindsay
- Hugh Lofting
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Amy Lowell
- John Livingston Lowes
- Mina Loy
- Clare Boothe Luce
- Charles MacArthur
- Percy MacKaye
- Archibald MacLeish
- Frances Marion
- Edwin Markham
- Edgar Lee Masters
- F.O. Matthiessen
- Robert McAlmon
- Claude McKay
- H.L. Mencken
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Alice Duer Miller
- Margaret Mitchell
- Harriet Monroe
- Marianne Moore
- Paul Elmer More
- John Gneisenau Neihardt
- Richard Nugent
- Rose Cecil O’Neill
- Clifford Odets
- Tillie Olsen
- Dorothy Parker
- Vernon L. Parrington
- Josephine Preston Peabody
- Lucy Fitch Perkins
- Maxwell Perkins
- Ralph Barton Perry
- David Pinski
- Eleanor Hodgman Porter
- Gene Stratton Porter
- Katherine Anne Porter
- Ezra Pound
- Ellery Queen
- Philip Rahv
- John Crowe Ransom
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
- Lizette Woodworth Reese
- Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
- Elmer Rice
- Laura Riding
- Ameen Rihani
- Mary Roberts Rinehart
- Elizabeth Madox Roberts
- Kenneth Roberts
- Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Henry Roth
- Damon Runyon
- Carl Sandburg
- Anne Douglas Sedgwick
- Ernest Thompson Seton
- Charles Monroe Sheldon
- Robert E. Sherwood
- Constance Lindsay Skinner
- Gertrude Stein
- Wallace Stevens
- Michael Strange
- Edward Stratemeyer
- Genevieve Taggard
- Booth Tarkington
- Allen Tate
- Sara Teasdale
- Albert Payson Terhune
- Dorothy Thompson
- Wallace Henry Thurman
- Eunice Tietjens
- Jean Toomer
- Ridgely Torrence
- Lionel Trilling
- S.S. Van Dine
- Carl Van Doren
- Mark Van Doren
- Henry Van Dyke
- Carl Van Vechten
- Carolyn Wells
- Nathanael West
- Edith Wharton
- Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Thornton Wilder
- William Carlos Williams
- Edmund Wilson
- Yvor Winters
- Thomas Wolfe
- Richard Wright
- Elinor Wylie
Post-World War II
- Edward Abbey
- George Abbott
- Walter Abish
- M.H. Abrams
- Jill Abramson
- Diane Ackerman
- Goodman Ace
- Kathy Acker
- Renata Adler
- James Agee
- Conrad Aiken
- Edward Albee
- Sherman Alexie
- Nelson Algren
- Paula Gunn Allen
- Woody Allen
- Svetlana Alliluyeva
- Joseph Alsop
- A.R. Ammons
- Rudolfo A. Anaya
- Poul Anderson
- Roger Angell
- Maya Angelou
- Kenneth Anger
- David Antin
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Max Apple
- Harriette Arnow
- Sholem Asch
- John Ashbery
- Isaac Asimov
- Brooke Russell Astor
- Louis Auchincloss
- W.H. Auden
- Jean Auel
- Paul Auster
- Pearl Bailey
- Augusta Braxton Baker
- Carlos Baker
- Russell Baker
- James Baldwin
- Toni Cade Bambara
- Russell Banks
- Amiri Baraka
- Red Barber
- John Barth
- Donald Barthelme
- Frederick Barthelme
- W. Jackson Bate
- Ann Beattie
- Alison Bechdel
- Saul Bellow
- Nina Berberova
- Gertrude Berg
- Thomas Berger
- Daniel Berrigan
- Wendell Berry
- John Berryman
- Alfred Bester
- Frank Bidart
- Elizabeth Bishop
- Richard Bissell
- James Blish
- Allan Bloom
- Harold Bloom
- Judy Blume
- Robert Bly
- Louise Bogan
- Wayne C. Booth
- Anthony Boucher
- Catherine Bowen
- Jane Bowles
- Paul Bowles
- Kay Boyle
- Ray Bradbury
- Roark Bradford
- Ben Bradlee
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Richard Brautigan
- Jimmy Breslin
- John Malcolm Brinnin
- Harold Brodkey
- Joseph Brodsky
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Richard Brooks
- Van Wyck Brooks
- Claude Brown
- Dan Brown
- Helen Gurley Brown
- Sterling Brown
- Tina Brown
- Pearl S. Buck
- Charles Bukowski
- Ed Bullins
- William S. Burroughs
- Frederick Busch
- Octavia E. Butler
- James M. Cain
- Erskine Caldwell
- Taylor Caldwell
- Hortense Calisher
- Bebe Moore Campbell
- John W. Campbell
- Truman Capote
- Robert Caro
- John Dickson Carr
- Hayden Carruth
- Raymond Carver
- Ana Castillo
- Michael Chabon
- Joseph Chaikin
- Raymond Chandler
- Paddy Chayefsky
- John Cheever
- Alice Childress
- John Ciardi
- Sandra Cisneros
- Amy Clampitt
- Tom Clancy
- Walter van Tilburg Clark
- Beverly Cleary
- Hal Clement
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Lucille Clifton
- Billy Collins
- Jackie Collins
- Suzanne Collins
- Padraic Colum
- Betty Comden
- Evan S. Connell
- Marc Connelly
- Robert Coover
- Alfred Corn
- Patricia Cornwell
- Gregory Corso
- Jayne Cortez
- Bill Cosby
- Thomas B. Costain
- Norman Cousins
- Malcolm Cowley
- James Gould Cozzens
- Robert Creeley
- Frederick C. Crews
- Michael Crichton
- Stanley Crouch
- Mary Crow Dog
- R. Crumb
- James Crumley
- J.V. Cunningham
- Christopher Paul Curtis
- Edwidge Danticat
- Henry Darger
- Donald Davidson
- Angela Davis
- Lydia Davis
- Ossie Davis
- Paul de Man
- Agnes de Mille
- Peter De Vries
- Samuel R. Delany
- Don DeLillo
- Maya Deren
- Kiran Desai
- Babette Deutsch
- Diane di Prima
- Abby Morton Diaz
- Kate DiCamillo
- Philip K. Dick
- James Dickey
- Joan Didion
- Annie Dillard
- Thomas Dixon
- Stephen Dobyns
- E.L. Doctorow
- Owen Dodson
- Sam Donaldson
- J.P. Donleavy
- Rita Dove
- Andre Dubus
- Alan Dugan
- Henry Dumas
- Robert Duncan
- John Gregory Dunne
- Ariel and Will Durant
- Richard Eberhart
- Leon Edel
- Jennifer Egan
- Dave Eggers
- Will Eisner
- Lonne Elder III
- Stanley Elkin
- Harlan Ellison
- Ralph Ellison
- Richard Ellmann
- James Ellroy
- Nora Ephron
- Louise Erdrich
- Janet Evanovich
- Mari Evans
- William Everson
- Clifton Fadiman
- John Fante
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Leslie Fiedler
- Harvey Fierstein
- Shulamith Firestone
- M.F.K. Fisher
- Robert Fitzgerald
- Janet Flanner
- Gillian Flynn
- Horton Foote
- Shelby Foote
- Carolyn Forché
- Richard Ford
- Maria Irene Fornés
- Leon Forrest
- James Franco
- Jonathan Franzen
- Michael Fried
- Bruce Jay Friedman
- Charles Fuller
- William Gaddis
- Ernest J. Gaines
- Tess Gallagher
- John Gardner
- William H. Gass
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- James Maurice Gavin
- Theodor Seuss Geisel
- Jack Gelber
- Elizabeth George
- Zulfikar Ghose
- William Gibson
- Brendan Gill
- Allen Ginsberg
- Nikki Giovanni
- Malcolm Gladwell
- Jacob Glatstein
- Louise Glück
- Gail Godwin
- Horace Gold
- Albert Goldbarth
- Amy Goodman
- William Goldman
- Mary Gordon
- Ruth Gordon
- Edward Gorey
- Chaim Grade
- Sue Grafton
- Jorie Graham
- Shirley Ann Grau
- Julien Green
- Paul Green
- Stephen Greenblatt
- Horace Gregory
- John Grisham
- John Guare
- Thom Gunn
- A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
- Rosa Guy
- David Halberstam
- Alex Haley
- Donald Hall
- Edith Hamilton
- Dashiell Hammett
- Daniel Handler
- Barry Hannah
- Lorraine Hansberry
- Joseph Hansen
- Elizabeth Hardwick
- Joy Harjo
- Michael S. Harper
- Michael Harrington
- E. Lynn Harris
- Jim Harrison
- Geoffrey H. Hartman
- Robert Hass
- Ethan Hawke
- John Hawkes
- Robert Hayden
- Shirley Hazzard
- Anthony Hecht
- Ben Hecht
- Carolyn Heilbrun
- Robert A. Heinlein
- Joseph Heller
- Lillian Hellman
- Aleksandar Hemon
- Beth Henley
- Frank Herbert
- John Hersey
- Patricia Highsmith
- Oscar Hijuelos
- Chester Himes
- Christopher Hitchens
- Edward Hoagland
- Russell Hoban
- Laura Z. Hobson
- Abbie Hoffman
- Alice Hoffman
- Daniel Hoffman
- A.M. Homes
- bell hooks
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