Writers and literary biographies

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (Лев Николаевич Толстой, 1828–1910), Russian count and novelist of Yasnaya Polyana; author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, later founder of the nonviolent Tolstoyan doctrine that influenced Gandhi.

Leo Vroman

Leo Vroman (1915–2014) was a Dutch-American poet, biologist, and artist who fled the Netherlands in 1940, later researched blood coagulation in Brooklyn, and won the P.C. Hooftprijs.

León de Greiff

León de Greiff, born Francisco León de Greiff Häusler, was a Colombian poet born in Medellín in 1895 whose musical, obscure verse made him central to Colombian poetry.

Leon Uris

Leon Uris (1924–2003), American novelist and Marine veteran, author of Exodus (1958), Mila 18, QB VII, and Trinity; his heavily researched bestsellers shaped American views of Israel and reached Soviet Jews in samizdat.

Leon Wieseltier

Leon Wieseltier, American literary critic and editor; Literary Editor of The New Republic 1983-2014; author of Kaddish (1998); later Brookings fellow, Atlantic critic, and founder of Liberties.

Léon-Gontran Damas

Léon-Gontran Damas (1912–1978) was a French Guianese poet who co-founded the Négritude movement with Césaire and Senghor; his first collection, Pigments (1937), confronted colonial racism.

Leonhard Frank

Leonhard Frank (1882–1961) was a German novelist, dramatist, and pacifist who first became known with Die Räuberbande (1914) and was a leading writer of the Weimar Republic.

Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Andreyev (Леонид Андреев, 1871–1919) was a Russian writer of prose, drama, and journalism whose 1901 story collection made him a literary star, often described as a forerunner of expressionism.

Leonid Leonov

Leonid Leonov, also known as Leonid Maksimovich Leonov, was a Soviet novelist and playwright born in Moscow whose novel The Russian Forest won the Lenin Prize in 1957.

Leónidas Lamborghini

Leónidas Lamborghini (1927–2009) was an Argentine poet, playwright, and novelist, a renovator of 1960s Argentine lyric poetry whose work drew on parody, rewriting, and the gauchesca tradition.

Léonora Miano

Léonora Miano is a Cameroonian-born French-language writer of novels, theater, and essays who won the Prix Goncourt des lycéens in 2006 and the Prix Femina in 2013.

Leons Briedis

Leons Briedis (1949–2020) was a Latvian poet, novelist, essayist, critic, publisher, and translator from Latin, Russian, English, Romance languages, Swahili, and Albanian, whose vast translation work shaped Latvian literary culture.

Leopold Staff

Leopold Staff (1878–1957) was a Polish poet, dramatist, and translator ranked with Julian Tuwim and Bolesław Leśmian among the greatest Polish poets of the 20th century.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895), Austrian writer born in Lemberg, author of Venus in Furs (1870) and the Legacy of Cain cycle; Krafft-Ebing derived the term masochism from his name.

Leopoldo Lugones

Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) was an Argentine poet, essayist, and storyteller, the leading Spanish American modernista after Rubén Darío and author of La guerra gaucha and El payador.

Leopoldo Marechal

Leopoldo Marechal (1900–1970) was an Argentine poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist of the Martín Fierro avant-garde generation, best known for Adán Buenosayres (1948); his support for Peronism brought two decades of ostracism before 1960s recognition.

Les Murray

Les Murray, born Leslie Allan Murray (1938–2019), was an Australian poet known for poetry rooted in rural Bunyah, New South Wales, and often called Australia's unofficial national poet.

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.

Lesya Ukrainka

Lesya Ukrainka, pen name of Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka, was a Ukrainian poet and playwright (1871–1913) who developed the dramatic poem and wrote The Forest Song.

Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman, American novelist and former Time book critic, author of the #1 NYT bestselling Magicians trilogy (The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician's Land) and the 2024 Arthurian novel The Bright Sword.

Levon Shant

Levon Shant (Լեւոն Շանթ; born Levon Nahashbedian, baptized Levon Seghposian, 1869–1951) was an Armenian playwright, novelist, and educator best known for the acclaimed drama Ancient Gods.

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll, pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), Oxford mathematician at Christ Church, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, logician, photographer, and voting theorist.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Lewis Grassic Gibbon, pen name of Scottish writer James Leslie Mitchell (1901–1935), author of A Scots Quair; Sunset Song (1932) blends Doric, Scots and English and was voted Scotland's best loved novel in 2016.

Lewis Grizzard

Lewis Grizzard, full name Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. (1946–1994), was an American columnist and humorist whose Atlanta Journal-Constitution column ran in some 450 newspapers and produced 25 best-selling books.

Lewis Hancox

Lewis Hancox (born 1989) is a British trans author, illustrator, filmmaker, and comedy creator from St Helens, known for the Scholastic graphic memoirs Welcome to St. Hell and Escape from St Hell, the Eisner-nominated trans teen memoir, viral comedy videos, and co-founding My Genderation.

Lewis Morris (1833–1907)

Sir Lewis Morris (1833–1907) was a Welsh poet and barrister whose best-selling Epic of Hades ran to over 50,000 copies, and who led Welsh education reform.

Lewis Nkosi

Lewis Nkosi (1936–2010) was a South African novelist, playwright, and critic who left apartheid South Africa in 1960 and spent most of his career in exile.

Leyla Erbil

Leyla Erbil (1931–2013) was a Turkish novelist and short-story writer, a pioneer of modernist narrative in Turkish literature, nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2002 and 2004.

Leylâ Hanım

Leylâ Hanım (died 1848) was an Ottoman divan poet from Istanbul, ranked among the five most important women poets of classical Turkish poetry; her only work is her Dîvân of 2,534 couplets.