Writers and literary biographies

Spalding Gray

Spalding Gray (1941–2004), American actor and monologuist, Wooster Group co-founder, famed for Swimming to Cambodia, filmed by Jonathan Demme in 1987; died by suicide after a 2001 Irish car crash.

Srečko Kosovel

Srečko Kosovel (1904–1926) was a Slovenian poet, a central figure of Slovenian modern poetry and the avant-garde, who left over 1,000 poems before dying at 22.

Sri Sri (శ్రీశ్రీ) was the pen name of Srirangam Srinivasa Rao, a twentieth-century Telugu poet and lyricist from Visakhapatnam whose free-verse Mahaprasthanam became a landmark of progressive Telugu poetry.

Srinatha

Srinatha was a Telugu poet of the Andhra coastal region, born in the late 14th century, honored as kavi-sarvabhauma, "Emperor of Poets," and poet laureate to the Reddi kings.

Stan and Jan Berenstain

Stan and Jan Berenstain (both born 1923) were a Philadelphia-born husband-and-wife cartoonist team who created the Berenstain Bears with Dr. Seuss as editor in 1962; more than 300 books and hundreds of millions of copies sold.

Stan Lee

Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber, 1922–2018), American comic-book writer, editor, and publisher; editor of Marvel 1942–1972 and its publisher from 1972, public face of Marvel and disputed co-creator of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.

Stanisław Lem

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006), Polish novelist, futurologist and critic, author of Solaris and The Cyberiad; most translated Polish writer, over 40 languages, 30–45 million copies; 2021 Year of Lem centenary.

Stanlake Samkange

Stanlake Samkange (1922–1988) was a Zimbabwean journalist, historian, novelist, and nationalist politician whose 1966 novel On Trial for My Country was the first English novel published by a Black Zimbabwean.

Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006) was an American poet from Worcester, Massachusetts, who won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize and became the tenth US Poet Laureate at age ninety-five.

Statius

Statius was a Latin poet of the Flavian age, best known for the Thebaid, a twelve-book epic on the war of the Seven against Thebes.

Steen Steensen Blicher

Steen Steensen Blicher (1782–1848) was a Danish writer and Lutheran pastor whose short stories about rural Jutland made him a founder of modern Danish prose and its first great realist.

Stefan Andres

Stefan Andres (1906–1970) was a German novelist and playwright, a left-Catholic author who spent the Nazi years in exile in Positano and wrote Wir sind Utopia there in 1941.

Stefan George

Stefan George (1868–1933) was a German poet, translator, and editor who renewed German lyric through French Symbolism, led the exclusive George-Kreis, and refused honors from the Nazi government.

Stefan Heym

Stefan Heym, born Helmut Flieg (1913–2001), was a German writer and journalist who fled the Nazis, became a bestselling novelist in America, and settled in East Berlin in 1952 as the GDR's leading literary dissident.

Stefan Żeromski

Stefan Żeromski (1864–1925) was a Polish novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist hailed at his death as the "conscience of Polish literature", known for Syzyfowe prace, Popioły, and Przedwiośnie.

Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), Austrian-Jewish writer of psychological novellas and popular biographies, author of Sternstunden der Menschheit, The Royal Game, and The World of Yesterday; exiled from Nazi Europe, died by suicide in Petrópolis, Brazil.

Stein Mehren

Stein Mehren (1935–2017) was a Norwegian poet and essayist, regarded as one of the foremost lyricists in recent Norwegian literature, who published nearly 30 poetry collections and won major prizes.

Steinn Steinarr

Steinn Steinarr, pen name of Aðalsteinn Kristmundsson (1908–1958), was an Icelandic poet from the Westfjords whose cycle Tíminn og vatnið marked the breakthrough of modernism in Icelandic poetry.

Steinunn Sigurðardóttir

Steinunn Sigurðardóttir (born 1950 in Reykjavík) is an Icelandic novelist and poet who debuted at 19 with the poetry collection Sífellur and has won the Icelandic Literary Prize twice.

Stella Gibbons

Stella Gibbons (Stella Dorothea Gibbons, 1902–1989) was a British journalist, poet, and novelist best known for Cold Comfort Farm (1932), her comic parody of rural novels.

Sten Nadolny

Sten Nadolny is a German novelist and historian whose 1983 novel The Discovery of Slowness became one of the most successful German-language novels of its decade.

Stendhal

Stendhal, pseudonym of Marie-Henri Beyle (1783-1842), French novelist born in Grenoble; author of The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, pioneer of psychological realism, consul at Civitavecchia, recognized mainly posthumously.

Stéphane Mallarmé

Stéphane Mallarmé (Étienne Mallarmé, 1842–1898), French Symbolist poet, one of the four major French poets of the late nineteenth century; author of L'Après-midi d'un faune and Un coup de dés, host of the mardis, elected prince des poètes in 1896.

Stephanie Burt

Stephanie Burt, born 1971, is an American poet, literary critic, and Harvard professor of English known for coining the Elliptical Poets and for books including Don't Read Poetry.

Stephanie Williams (comics)

Stephanie Williams, American comic book writer, former research scientist; known for DC's Nubia & the Amazons, Marvel's Wakanda, and as the first Black woman Eisner Best Writer nominee (2026), writing Wonder Woman and Vixen.

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).

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane (1871-1900), American novelist, poet, and war correspondent; author of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage, The Open Boat, and The Black Riders; pioneer of American literary naturalism who died of tuberculosis at 28.

Stephen Duck

Stephen Duck (c. 1705–1756) was an English laboring-class poet known as the "thresher poet" who rose from Wiltshire farm work to Queen Caroline's patronage in 1730.

Stephen Gray (writer)

Stephen Gray (1941–2020) was a South African novelist, poet, playwright, and editor, widely described as the country's foremost literary historiographer; his works include eight novels and biographies of Beatrice Hastings and Herman Charles Bosman.