247 articles
Mark Helprin
Mark Helprin (born 1947) is an American novelist and political essayist, author of Winter's Tale (1983), A Soldier of the Great War, and Paris in the Present Tense; PEN/Faulkner and Prix de Rome winner, Dole 1996 speechwriter.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), American humorist and novelist born in Florida, Missouri; author of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884), licensed Mississippi riverboat pilot, Hartford resident 1874–1891, bankrupt investor.
Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski is an American experimental novelist, author of House of Leaves (2000), National Book Award finalist Only Revolutions, The Fifty Year Sword, and the five-volume series The Familiar; born in New York City, based in Los Angeles.
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.
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon, American novelist (born 1963, Washington, D.C.), Pulitzer Prize winner for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; also wrote Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Moonglow; showrunner of Star Trek: Picard; lives in Berkeley with Ayelet Waldman.
Min Jin Lee (이민진)
Min Jin Lee (이민진, born 1968) is a Korea-born American novelist, author of Free Food for Millionaires, the National Book Award finalist Pachinko, and American Hagwon (2026), third of her Diaspora Quartet; New York State Author Laureate 2025–2027.
Molly Elliot Seawell
Molly Elliot Seawell (1853–1916) was an American novelist and essayist from Gloucester County, Virginia, who published almost forty volumes of fiction and nautical books and was a leading opponent of woman suffrage.
Mona Simpson
Mona Simpson is an American novelist (born 1957, Green Bay, Wisconsin), author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, Off Keck Road, and Commitment, UCLA professor, Paris Review publisher, and biological sister of Steve Jobs.
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), American novelist and short-story writer born in Salem, Massachusetts; author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables; descendant of a Salem witch-trial judge.
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.
Nico Walker
Nico Walker (born 1985), American novelist from Cleveland; not Nick Walker or Nicole Walker. Former Army medic with 250+ Iraq missions who robbed 10 banks, wrote the NYT-bestselling PEN/Hemingway finalist novel Cherry in prison, adapted as a 2021 Russo brothers film.
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.
O. Henry
O. Henry, pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), American short story writer of some 300 stories with surprise endings, including "The Gift of the Magi"; ex-convict for embezzlement, New York-set fiction, O. Henry Award namesake.
Ole Edvart Rølvaag
Ole Edvart Rølvaag (1876–1931), born Ole Edvart Pedersen, was a Norwegian-American novelist and St. Olaf professor whose Giants in the Earth (1927) became a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection.
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.
Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh (born 1981, Boston), also Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh, American novelist of Eileen, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona; PEN/Hemingway winner, Booker-shortlisted, known for isolated, bodily candid narrators.
Owen King
Owen King (Owen Philip King, born 1979, Maine) is an American novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter, youngest son of Stephen and Tabitha King; author of Double Feature and The Curator, coauthor of Sleeping Beauties (2017), and writer-producer on Paramount+'s The Stand.
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 Auster
Paul Auster (1947-2024), American novelist, memoirist, poet and screenwriter, author of The New York Trilogy, Smoke, 4 3 2 1 and Baumgartner; Brooklyn-based, France-beloved postmodernist.
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.
Percival Everett
Percival Everett (born 1956) is an American novelist, poet, and USC English professor, author of Erasure, The Trees, Dr. No, and James, the 2024 National Book Award and 2025 Pulitzer Prize-winning retelling of Huckleberry Finn.
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.