109 articles
Henry Miller
Henry Miller (1891–1980), American writer of Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, and Tropic of Capricorn; Paris-based autobiographical novelist banned for obscenity for decades, later Big Sur resident.
Hubert Selby Jr.
Hubert Selby Jr. (1928–2004) was an American writer whose cult classic Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) sold over 750,000 copies and was tried for obscenity in England and Italy.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער), also Yitskhok Bashevis, Polish-born American Yiddish novelist and 1978 Nobel laureate; author of Satan in Goray, The Family Moskat, and "Gimpel the Fool," known for demon narrators and supervised English "second originals."
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed, born 1938 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is an American novelist, poet, essayist, and cultural critic known for his satirical Neo-HooDoo aesthetic and the novel Mumbo Jumbo.
J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger (Jerome David Salinger), 1919 to 2010, was an American writer whose novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) sold more than 65 million copies.
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), American novelist and poet of On the Road, coined the Beat Generation. French-Canadian-born Lowell, Massachusetts writer of spontaneous prose; died at 47 of liver damage.
James A. Michener
James A. Michener (1907–1997), American novelist of place-based epic historical fiction; author of Tales of the South Pacific (1948 Pulitzer), Hawaii, Centennial, and The Covenant; about 100 million copies sold.
James Agee
James Agee (1909–1955) was an American writer known for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family.
James Baldwin
James Baldwin (1924–1987), Harlem-born American novelist and essayist of Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, and The Fire Next Time; civil rights witness, Cambridge Union debater, and subject of I Am Not Your Negro.
James Gould Cozzens
James Gould Cozzens was an American novelist who wrote thirteen novels between 1924 and 1968 and won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Guard of Honor.
James Leo Herlihy
James Leo Herlihy (1927-1993) was a Detroit-born American novelist, playwright, and actor; Blue Denim (1958) and Midnight Cowboy (1965) distinguished him from contemporaries, the latter becoming the only X-rated Best Picture Oscar winner.
James Salter
James Salter, born James Horowitz, was an American novelist and screenwriter who flew more than 100 combat missions in Korea before leaving the Air Force to write.
James T. Farrell
James T. Farrell (1904–1979) was an American novelist and leading naturalist whose Studs Lonigan trilogy, drawn from his South Side Chicago childhood, became a modern classic.
James Welch (writer)
James Welch (1940–2003), Blackfeet-Gros Ventre novelist and poet of Browning, Montana; author of Winter in the Blood, Fools Crow, The Indian Lawyer, and The Heartsong of Charging Elk; forerunner of the Native American Renaissance.
Jean Stafford
Jean Stafford (1915–1979) was an American novelist and short story writer who won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her Collected Stories and wrote the novels Boston Adventure and The Mountain Lion.
Jerzy Kosiński
Jerzy Kosiński (Jerzy Kosinski, born Jerzy Lewinkopf), Polish-American novelist (1933-1991), author of The Painted Bird, Steps (National Book Award), and Being There; PEN president, undone by 1982 Village Voice plagiarism and ghostwriting accusations, died by suicide in 1991.
Jessie R. Fauset
Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882–1961), American novelist, poet, and literary editor of The Crisis (1919–1926) and The Brownies' Book; author of four novels including Plum Bun; mentor of Hughes, Cullen, McKay, and Toomer.
John Barth
John Barth (1930–April 2, 2024) was an American novelist and short-story writer, a leading postmodernist known for The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and Lost in the Funhouse.
John Edgar Wideman
John Edgar Wideman (born 1941) is an American novelist, essayist, and memoirist from Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood and the first writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice.
John Hersey
John Hersey (1914–1993) was an American journalist and novelist whose 1946 book Hiroshima is often called the first nonfiction novel; he won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for A Bell for Adano.
John Irving
John Irving (born 1942, Exeter, New Hampshire) is an American novelist, author of The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and The Cider House Rules; National Book Award and Oscar winner, sixteen novels, lives in Toronto.
John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969), New Orleans novelist, wrote A Confederacy of Dunces, failed to publish it, died by suicide, and won the posthumous 1981 Pulitzer Prize after Walker Percy's intervention.
John Rechy
John Rechy (Juan Francisco Rechy, born 1931, El Paso, Texas) is a Mexican American gay novelist whose 1963 bestseller City of Night pioneered gay literature; also The Sexual Outlaw, UCLA Medal 2019.
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck (1902–1968), Salinas-born American novelist and 1962 Nobel laureate, author of Tortilla Flat, The Grapes of Wrath (Pulitzer Prize), East of Eden, and Travels with Charley.
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (1932–2009), American novelist, poet, and critic, author of the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy and two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, chronicler of middle-class American life.
Jonathan Baumbach
Jonathan Baumbach (1933–2019), American experimental novelist, film critic, and Brooklyn College professor; co-founded the Fiction Collective/FC2 with Peter Spielberg; author of Reruns, B, and Dreams of Molly; father of filmmaker Noah Baumbach.
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller (1923–1999), American novelist and WWII bombardier from Coney Island, Brooklyn; author of Catch-22 (1961), which sold over ten million copies, plus Something Happened, God Knows, and Closing Time.
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938, Lockport, New York), also published as Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly, is a prolific American novelist, story writer, and essayist; National Book Award 1970 for them, Pulitzer finalist five times, Princeton professor since 1978.
Joyce Maynard
Joyce Maynard (born 1953) is an American novelist and memoirist, author of Labor Day, To Die For, and At Home in the World, known for her 1972 New York Times essay and her relationship with J. D. Salinger.
Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter (Callie Russell Porter, 1890–1980), American short-story writer and journalist, author of "Flowering Judas," "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," "Noon Wine," and the only novel Ship of Fools (1962); Pulitzer and National Book Award winner, Texas-born modernist.