247 articles
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 McBride (writer)
James McBride (born 1957) is an American author, musician, and screenwriter from Brooklyn, known for The Color of Water, the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
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.
Jan Ellison
Jan Ellison (Jan Ellison Baszucki), American novelist, author of the debut novel A Small Indiscretion (Random House, 2014), a USA TODAY bestseller and O. Henry Prize-winning short story writer.
Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney, born John Barrett McInerney Jr. in 1955, is an American novelist known for Bright Lights, Big City (1984), the Brat Pack, and his wine column for Town & Country.
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.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides, American novelist born in Detroit in 1960, author of The Virgin Suicides (1993), Pulitzer-winning Middlesex (2002), The Marriage Plot (2011), and Fresh Complaint (2017).
Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan, American novelist and journalist born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco; author of A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011 Pulitzer Prize), Look at Me, Manhattan Beach, and The Candy House.
Jennifer Finney Boylan
Jennifer Finney Boylan (born 1958) is an American author of 19 books, formerly James Finney Boylan; her 2003 memoir She's Not There was the first bestselling work by a transgender American, and she is former PEN America president and GLAAD co-chair.
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.
Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward (born 1977) is an American novelist from DeLisle, Mississippi, author of Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, the only woman to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice, plus Men We Reaped, Let Us Descend, and a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship.
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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri, British-American novelist and translator, born 1967 London; Pulitzer 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies; wrote The Namesake and The Lowland, then Italian works like In altre parole and Whereabouts.
Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), Georgia journalist and folklorist, creator of the Uncle Remus tales; associate editor of the Atlanta Constitution 1876-1900, author of 185 Brer Rabbit folktales.
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 Cheever
John Cheever (1912–1982), American short story writer and novelist, the 'Chekhov of the suburbs'; author of The Wapshot Chronicle, 'The Swimmer', and the Pulitzer-winning The Stories of John Cheever.
John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos (1896-1970), American modernist novelist of Manhattan Transfer (1925) and the U.S.A. trilogy (1930-1936), known for Newsreel, Camera Eye, and biography collage techniques.
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.