247 articles
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.
Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver (1938–1988), American short-story writer and poet of minimalism and dirty realism; author of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and Cathedral; his spare style was heavily shaped by editor Gordon Lish.
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 Ford
Richard Ford (born 1944, Jackson, Mississippi), American novelist of the Frank Bascombe series (The Sportswriter, Independence Day), first novelist to win both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award for one novel.
Richard Powers
Richard Powers is an American novelist who fuses scientific and technical subject matter with literary narrative. He is best known for The Overstory, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner.
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.
Rick Moody
Rick Moody (Hiram F. Moody III, born 1961), American novelist of Garden State, The Ice Storm, and Purple America, plus The Black Veil memoir; Pushcart, Guggenheim, Bonderman Professor at Brown; also records with the Wingdale Community Singers.
Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner (Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, 1885-1933), American sportswriter, columnist, and satirical short-story writer, author of You Know Me Al and the Jack Keefe baseball letters, famed for his ear for American vernacular speech.
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.
Rufi Thorpe
Rufi Thorpe, American novelist (MFA University of Virginia, 2009), author of four literary fiction novels: The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014), The Knockout Queen (PEN/Faulkner finalist), and the Kirkus Prize-finalist Margo's Got Money Troubles (2024), adapted for Apple TV+.
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.
Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young
Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young (1882–1954) was an American novelist, poet, and playwright of Los Gatos, California, best known for Of Human Kindness (1940), her answer to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Ryka Aoki
Ryka Aoki, American poet, composer, and novelist; author of He Mele a Hilo (2014) and Light From Uncommon Stars (2021), which won the Otherwise, Alex, and Stonewall Awards and was a Hugo finalist.
S. Alice Callahan
S. Alice Callahan (1868–1894), born Sophia Alice Callahan, was a Muscogee writer and teacher credited as the first Native American woman to write a novel, Wynema (1891).
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros, Chicago-born (1954) Chicana writer, author of The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek, and Caramelo; MacArthur Fellow and 2016 National Medal of Arts recipient.
Sapphire (author)
Sapphire, pen name of Ramona Lofton (born 1950), American poet and novelist; her 1996 debut Push, about Harlem teenager Precious Jones, won the Stephen Crane Award and became the film Precious (2009).
Sarah Orne Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) was an American writer of fiction about coastal and rural New England, best known for "A White Heron" and The Country of the Pointed Firs.
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.
Shelby Van Pelt
Shelby Van Pelt, American novelist, author of the 2022 debut bestseller Remarkably Bright Creatures (Marcellus the octopus, Tova Sullivan); Heartland Prize winner; Netflix film adaptation with Sally Field.
Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie (born 1966) is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene poet, novelist, and filmmaker from the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. Known for The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Reservation Blues, and the 2007 National Book Award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; his screenplay Smoke Signals won awards at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Publicly alleged sexual misconduct surfaced in 2018.
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941), American writer of Winesburg, Ohio (1919), also businessman, advertiser, and Virginia newspaper editor who influenced Faulkner and Hemingway.
Simon Rich
Simon Rich (born 1984), American humorist and screenwriter, son of Frank Rich; youngest-ever SNL writer, Pixar's Inside Out, creator of Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers, author of Ant Farm through Glory Days, and writer of An American Pickle and Wonka.
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.
Sister Souljah
Sister Souljah (Lisa Williamson, born 1964, Bronx) is an American hip-hop artist, activist, and author of The Coldest Winter Ever; her 1992 clash with Bill Clinton created the political phrase "Sister Souljah moment."
Stephen Chbosky
Stephen Chbosky (born 1972) is an American novelist, screenwriter, and director, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), which he filmed in 2012, and director of Wonder (2017) and Nonnas (2025).