109 articles
Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis (Harry Sinclair Lewis, 1885-1951), American satirical novelist from Sauk Centre, Minnesota; first American Nobel Literature laureate (1930), refused the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith; wrote Main Street, Babbitt, Elmer Gantry, and It Can't Happen Here.
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon, American novelist of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow (1974 National Book Award), Vineland, and Shadow Ticket (2025); reclusive, MacArthur Fellow, counterrealist postmodern fiction.
Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen, born Tillie Lerner, was an American writer and activist known for Tell Me a Riddle (1961) and Silences (1978), a study of why women and working-class writers go unheard.
Tim O'Brien (author)
Tim O'Brien (William Timothy O'Brien, born 1946) is the American author of Going After Cacciato (1979 National Book Award) and The Things They Carried (1990), Vietnam War fiction blending memory, metafiction, and truth.
Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins (Thomas Eugene Robbins, 1932 to 2025) was an American novelist whose comic countercultural novels, including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, drew a cult following from the 1970s.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, born Chloe Anthony Wofford (1931–2019), American novelist and editor; wrote 11 novels including The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved; Pulitzer Prize 1988; first African American woman Nobel Literature laureate, 1993.
Truman Capote
Truman Capote (Truman Streckfus Persons, 1924-1984), American author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, pioneer of the nonfiction novel, socially ruined by his Answered Prayers excerpts.
Walker Percy
Walker Percy (1916–1990) was an American novelist, essayist, and trained physician from the Deep South whose debut novel The Moviegoer won the National Book Award in 1961.
Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) was an American novelist, historian, and environmentalist who wrote about the American West and won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Angle of Repose.
Walter Tevis
Walter Stone Tevis (1928–1984), American novelist and short story writer, author of The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Mockingbird, and The Queen's Gambit; three novels became major films and the chess novel a Netflix Emmy-winning miniseries.
William Faulkner
William Faulkner (1897–1962), American novelist of Oxford, Mississippi, Nobel laureate in Literature 1949, creator of Yoknapatawpha County and stream-of-consciousness works such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!.
William Gaddis
William Gaddis (1922–1998) was an American novelist whose long, dialogue-driven satires of fraud, money, and language include The Recognitions, J R, and A Frolic of His Own; he won the National Book Award twice.
William H. Gass
William H. Gass, born William Howard Gass (1924–2017), was an American novelist, essayist, and philosopher who coined the word metafiction and won the American Book Award for The Tunnel.
William Kennedy (author)
William Joseph Kennedy (born 1928) is an American novelist and journalist from Albany, New York, creator of the eight-novel Albany Cycle; his Ironweed (1983) won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and he founded the New York State Writers Institute.
William Maxwell (editor)
William Maxwell, born William Keepers Maxwell Jr. (1908–2000), was an American novelist and longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker, where he edited Cheever, Welty, and Salinger.
William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), St. Louis-born Beat Generation writer, author of Naked Lunch and Junkie, pioneer of the cut-up technique with Brion Gysin, later a countercultural icon influencing music, film, and postmodern literature.
William Saroyan
William Saroyan (1908–1981), Armenian American writer and playwright from Fresno, author of The Time of Your Life, My Name Is Aram, and The Human Comedy; won and refused the 1940 Pulitzer Prize.
William Styron
William Styron (1925–2006), American novelist of the Virginia Tidewater, wrote Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner (Pulitzer 1968), Sophie's Choice, and the depression memoir Darkness Visible.
Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900–1948), Montgomery-born writer, painter, and dancer, wife and muse of F. Scott Fitzgerald; author of Save Me the Waltz and Scandalabra, icon of the Jazz Age flapper.