109 articles
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker (1947-1997) was an American experimental novelist and performance artist of punk feminism, known for Blood and Guts in High School and Empire of the Senseless and for cut-up collage and plagiarism of Genet, Burroughs, and Gibson.
Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey (1935–2001), American novelist of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, Merry Pranksters leader of the 1964 Furthur bus trip and Acid Tests, later an Oregon farmer and author of Sailor Song.
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922–2007), American satirical novelist of Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, Dresden POW, GE publicist, resister of the science-fiction label, and also a visual artist.
Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko, born 1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is an American novelist and poet of Laguna Pueblo ancestry, a leading figure in the Native American literary renaissance.
Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) was an American novelist, critic, and political commentator associated with Partisan Review, best known for Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and The Group.
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is an American writer whose blend of memoir, myth, and fiction made her a leading figure in Asian American literature; The Woman Warrior appeared in 1976.
N. Scott Momaday
N. Scott Momaday, born Navarre Scott Mammedaty, was a Kiowa American novelist and poet whose first novel, House Made of Dawn, won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren, born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham, was an American novelist and essayist who wrote about Chicago's outcasts and won the first National Book Award for fiction for The Man with the Golden Arm.
Norman Maclean
Norman Maclean (1902-1990), American writer and University of Chicago English professor, author of A River Runs Through It (1976), published at 73, and posthumous Young Men and Fire on the 1949 Mann Gulch fire.
Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer (1923-2007), American novelist and New Journalism pioneer, author of The Naked and the Dead, two-time Pulitzer winner for The Armies of the Night and The Executioner's Song, six-time husband, 1969 NYC mayoral candidate.
Oscar Hijuelos
Oscar Hijuelos (1951–2013) was an American novelist of Cuban descent, the first Hispanic writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy (Donald Patrick Conroy, 1945–2016), American novelist and memoirist of the South Carolina lowcountry; author of The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, The Lords of Discipline, and Beach Music; Citadel graduate and autobiographical writer.
Patrick Hemingway
Patrick Miller Hemingway (1928-2025), Ernest Hemingway's second son and last surviving child, was an East African safari guide and UN forestry officer who edited True at First Light (1999) and managed his father's literary estate from Bozeman, Montana.
Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles (1910–1999), American composer, novelist, and translator; author of The Sheltering Sky (1949); expatriate in Tangier from 1947; translator of Moroccan writers such as Mohamed Choukri.
Paul Theroux
Paul Edward Theroux (born 1941, Medford, Massachusetts) is an American novelist and travel writer, author of The Great Railway Bazaar and The Mosquito Coast, Peace Corps volunteer expelled from Malawi, Royal Geographical Society Royal Medal recipient, father of Louis Theroux.
Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall, born Valenza Pauline Burke (1929–2019), was an American novelist whose fiction portrays Black women across the African diaspora; her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), is considered a foundational Black feminist work.
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck (Sai Zhenzhu, 赛珍珠, 1892–1973), American novelist raised by missionaries in Zhenjiang, China; The Good Earth (1931) won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, and she became the first American woman Nobel literature laureate in 1938.
Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley (1940-2006), American author and journalist, wrote the 1974 bestseller Jaws, co-wrote its Spielberg film adaptation, then became a leading shark and ocean conservation advocate with his wife Wendy.
Philip Roth
Philip Roth (1933-2018), American novelist of Newark, New Jersey; author of Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, and the American trilogy; National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and two National Medals winner.
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914–1994), American novelist and essayist from Oklahoma City, author of Invisible Man (1952), the first African American winner of the National Book Award (1953); also wrote Shadow and Act and the posthumous Juneteenth.
Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan (1935-1984), American novelist and poet of the 1960s counterculture, author of Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar, and Revenge of the Lawn; died by suicide in 1984.
Richard Price (writer)
Richard Price, who also writes as Harry Brandt, is an American novelist and screenwriter born in New York in 1949, known for Clockers, Lush Life, and The Wire.
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright (1908–1960), American author of Native Son, Black Boy, and Uncle Tom's Children; Mississippi-born, Communist Party milieu, Paris exile, Spingarn Medal 1941.
Richard Yates (novelist)
Richard Yates (1926–1992), American realist novelist and short story writer from Yonkers, New York, author of Revolutionary Road (1961), a National Book Award finalist; also The Easter Parade, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness; a writers' writer with modest sales.
Rita Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown (born 1944) is an American poet, novelist, and screenwriter, author of Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), a foundational lesbian coming-of-age novel, the Mrs. Murphy mysteries co-written with cat Sneaky Pie Brown, and the Sister Jane foxhunting series.
Robert Coover
Robert Lowell Coover (1932–2024), American postmodern fiction writer, author of The Origin of the Brunists, Pricksongs & Descants with 'The Babysitter', and The Public Burning; Brown University professor and electronic literature pioneer.
Robert Stone (novelist)
Robert Stone (1937-2015), American novelist of moral and political extremity, author of A Hall of Mirrors, National Book Award winner Dog Soldiers (1974), A Flag for Sunrise, Outerbridge Reach, and Damascus Gate; ex-Navy, Merry Prankster, Vietnam journalist, Pulitzer finalist for Bear and His Daughter, died in Key West.
Rudolfo Anaya
Rudolfo Anaya, sometimes called the godfather of Chicano literature, was an American novelist from New Mexico whose first novel, Bless Me, Ultima (1972), became a foundational text of Chicano literature.
Russell Banks
Russell Banks (1940–2023) was an American novelist and short story writer whose fiction portrayed working-class lives in the rural Northeast; Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were both Pulitzer Prize finalists.
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (Solomon Bellows, 1915-2005), Canadian-born American novelist raised in Chicago; Nobel Prize in Literature 1976, three National Book Awards, Pulitzer for Humboldt's Gift; author of Augie March and Herzog.