Writers and literary biographies

Manuel Carpio

Manuel Carpio, full name Manuel Eulogio Carpio Hernández, was a Mexican poet, physician, and Conservative politician (1791–1860), known for the first printed depiction of La Llorona.

Manuel Gálvez (1882–1962) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, and biographer, the leading literary voice of Catholic nationalism, who wrote 44 books, including the novels Nacha Regules and Historia de Arrabal.

Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera

Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (1859–1895), known by his pseudonym El Duque Job, was a Mexican poet, journalist, and theater critic regarded as the initiator of Modernismo in Mexico.

Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga

Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga (1749–1814) was a Brazilian colonial poet and lawyer, a leading figure of Arcadism who wrote under the pen name Alcindo Palmireno.

Manuel José Othón

Manuel José Othón (1858–1906) was a Mexican poet, playwright, and politician from San Luis Potosí, remembered for Poemas rústicos and the sonnet sequence Idilio salvaje.

Manuel Mejía Vallejo

Manuel Mejía Vallejo (1923–1998) was a Colombian novelist and journalist whose work centers on rural Antioquia; he won Spain's Premio Nadal in 1963 and Venezuela's Premio Rómulo Gallegos in 1989.

Manuel Odorico Mendes

Manuel Odorico Mendes (1799–1864) was a Brazilian poet, journalist, politician, and translator from São Luís, Maranhão, who produced the first complete Portuguese translations of Homer and Virgil.

Manuel Payno

Manuel Payno (José Manuel Román Payno y Flores) was a Mexican novelist and politician, a liberal who served several terms as Minister of the Treasury and wrote Los bandidos de Río Frío.

Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig (Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne, 1932-1990) was an Argentine novelist, screenwriter, and LGBTQ activist, author of Kiss of the Spider Woman and Boquitas pintadas, exiled in 1973 after the Triple A threats.

Manuel Rivera Cambas

Manuel Rivera Cambas (1840–1917) was a Mexican mining engineer and historian whose works include Los gobernantes de México and the illustrated México pintoresco, artístico y monumental.

Manuel Rui

Manuel Rui, full name Manuel Rui Alves Monteiro, is an Angolan writer born in Huambo in 1941, a leading figure of postcolonial Angolan literature known for satire and humor.

Manuel Scorza

Manuel Scorza, full name Manuel Scorza Torres, was a Peruvian poet and novelist of the Generación del 50, known for La guerra silenciosa, a five-novel cycle about Andean peasants fighting to recover their lands.

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939–2003) was a Spanish novelist, poet, essayist, and journalist from Barcelona, best known as the creator of the detective Pepe Carvalho, a founder of the Spanish novela negra.

Manuel Zapata Olivella

Manuel Zapata Olivella (1920–2004) was a Colombian writer, physician, and anthropologist considered the leading representative of Afro-Colombian literature; his central novel is Changó, el gran putas (1983).

Manuk Abeghian

Manuk Abeghian (Մանուկ Աբեղյան, 1865–1944) was an Armenian philologist and folklorist who led the 1921 reform of Armenian orthography and edited the national epic Daredevils of Sassoun.

Mao Xiang

Mao Xiang, courtesy name Pijiang (冒襄, 1611–1693), was a Chinese writer and Ming loyalist from Rugao, known for the elegiac memoir Yingmei An Yiyu for his concubine Dong Xiaowan.

Māori Marsden

Māori Marsden (1924–1993) was a New Zealand Anglican minister, tohunga, scholar, and philosopher of Te Aupouri, best known for his seminal 1975 essay on Māori cosmology.

Māra Zālīte

Māra Zālīte, born 1952 in Siberia to a family deported by the Soviet regime, is a Latvian poet, playwright, and novelist whose rock opera Lāčplēsis premiered in 1988 during the Atmoda independence period.

Maraimalai Adigal

Maraimalai Adigal (மறைமலை அடிகள்), born Vedachalam Pillai, was a Tamil scholar, Saivite revivalist, and language reformer who founded the Pure Tamil movement in 1916 and shaped the Dravidian movement.

Marc Brown (author)

Marc Tolon Brown (born 1946) is an American children's author and illustrator, creator of Arthur the Aardvark (Arthur's Nose, 1976) and creative producer of the Emmy-winning PBS series Arthur; also illustrator of Wild About Books.

Marc Fumaroli

Marc Fumaroli (1932–2020) was a French historian of rhetoric and 17th-century literature, a professor at the Collège de France and member of the Académie française.

Marcel Barrière

Marcel Barrière (1860–1954) was a French man of letters, historian, and former cavalry officer, nominated for the 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature and awarded two Académie française prizes.

Marcel Jouhandeau

Marcel Jouhandeau (1888–1979) was a French novelist, essayist, and diarist who wrote more than a hundred books, including the Chaminadour cycle set in his native Guéret.

Marcel Pagnol

Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) was a French playwright, novelist, and filmmaker who shot sound films in Provence, built his own Marseille studios, and in 1946 became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française.

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust (Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, 1871–1922), French novelist, author of the seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), published 1913–1927, famous for involuntary memory and the madeleine episode.

Marcel Theroux

Marcel Theroux, British-American novelist and broadcaster, son of Paul Theroux and brother of Louis; author of Far North (National Book Award finalist), Strange Bodies (Campbell Award), and The Paperchase (Somerset Maugham Award).

Marcelijus Martinaitis

Marcelijus Martinaitis (1936–2013) was a Lithuanian poet, essayist, and translator best known for The Ballads of Kukutis (1977), whose trickster hero voiced dissent under Soviet censorship.

Marcelino dos Santos

Marcelino dos Santos (1929–2020) was a Mozambican poet and politician who helped found Frelimo and, after independence in 1975, served as planning minister and speaker of parliament.

Marcelino Freire

Marcelino Freire (Marcelino Juvêncio Freire) is a Brazilian writer of short fiction from Sertânia, Pernambuco, known for oral-inflected prose and the Jabuti-winning Contos Negreiros of 2006.