6,282 articles
Wilson Martins
Wilson Martins (1921–2010) was a Brazilian literary critic, historian of ideas, and newspaper columnist, best known for the seven-volume História da inteligência brasileira and a weekly column that ran in Brazilian newspapers for decades.
Wincenty of Kielcza
Wincenty of Kielcza (Wincenty z Kielczy, c. 1200 – after 1261) was a Polish Dominican friar who wrote two lives of Saint Stanislaus and the hymn Gaude Mater Polonia.
Winston Churchill (novelist)
Winston Churchill (1871-1947) was the American novelist of Richard Carvel and The Crisis, once more famous than the British statesman, who agreed to add 'Spencer' to his name; a Cornish Art Colony member and New Hampshire legislator.
Winston Graham
Winston Mawdsley Graham, English novelist (born Manchester, 1908 or 1910; died 2003), creator of the twelve Poldark novels of Cornwall (1945–2002) and author of Marnie, filmed by Hitchcock.
Winston Groom
Winston Groom (Winston Francis Groom Jr., 1943-2020), American novelist and historian, author of Forrest Gump (1986), basis of the 1994 six-Oscar film; also wrote Vietnam novels and military history including Shrouds of Glory.
Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), Polish poet and essayist, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature for ironic, precise poetry; about 350 poems, Kraków-based, fifth Polish Nobel laureate in literature.
Witi Ihimaera
Witi Ihimaera, born in 1944, is a New Zealand writer of Māori descent, the first Māori author to publish a story collection, Pounamu, Pounamu, and a novel.
Witold Gombrowicz
Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969), Polish novelist and playwright, author of Ferdydurke, Trans-Atlantyk, Pornografia, Cosmos and the Diary; themes of form, immaturity and identity; 24-year exile in Argentina; critic of Sartre's committed literature.
Władysław Reymont
Władysław Stanisław Reymont (born Rejment, 1867–1925), Polish novelist of the Young Poland period and 1924 Nobel laureate in Literature for the four-volume peasant epic Chłopi (The Peasants); also wrote Ziemia obiecana and Komediantka.
Władysław Syrokomla
Władysław Syrokomla, the pen name of Ludwik Kondratowicz (1823–1862), was a Polish-language Romantic poet and translator who lived in present-day Belarus and Lithuania and wrote the verse tales called gawędy.
Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka (Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka), Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, and activist born 13 July 1934 in Abeokuta; first African Nobel Literature laureate (1986), author of Death and the King's Horseman, The Interpreters, and Aké.
Wolfdietrich Schnurre
Wolfdietrich Schnurre (1920–1989) was a German writer and co-founder of the Gruppe 47, best known for short stories of war, guilt, and ruined postwar Berlin.
Wolfgang Herrndorf
Wolfgang Herrndorf was a German writer and painter best known for the 2010 novel Tschick, which sold about 3 million copies and was translated into 36 languages.
Wolfgang Hildesheimer
Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1916–1991) was a German writer, painter, and translator counted among the most important postwar German authors, known for Tynset, absurd drama, and his best-selling Mozart biography.
Wolfgang Koeppen
Wolfgang Koeppen (1906–1996) was a German novelist and critic whose trilogy Tauben im Gras, Das Treibhaus, and Der Tod in Rom confronts postwar Germany with its Nazi past.
Wolfram von Eschenbach
Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170 to c. 1220) was a Middle High German poet best known for Parzival, the Grail romance composed between 1200 and 1210.
Wong Bik-wan
Wong Bik-wan (黄碧云; Huang Biyun), born in Hong Kong in 1961, is a Hong Kong novelist, essayist, and former journalist who won the 2014 Dream of the Red Chamber Award.
World literature
World literature (Weltliteratur) is literature circulating beyond its culture of origin, chiefly in translation, and the field studying that circulation; coined by Goethe in 1827 and redefined by Damrosch in 2003 as a mode of reading, it is debated for Eurocentrism and translation dependence.
Writer
Writer: a person who produces written text as a profession or craft, from Old English writere (scribe, copyist). Distinct from author; spans journalism, technical writing since 1943, fiction, and ghostwriting, with US employment flat 2025-2035.
Writer's block
Writer's block is the inhibited ability to start or continue writing, a term coined by psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler in 1947; causes include physiological, motivational, cognitive, and behavioral factors, with remedies from freewriting to scheduled writing.
Wu Cheng'en
Wu Cheng'en (吴承恩, c. 1500–1582, courtesy name Ruzhong) was a Ming-dynasty novelist and minor official from Huai'an, Jiangsu, conventionally credited as the author of Journey to the West.
Wu Ming-yi
Wu Ming-yi (吳明益, born 1971) is a Taiwanese novelist, essayist, and professor at National Dong Hwa University, known for The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle.
Wu Wenying
Wu Wenying (c. 1200–c. 1260) was a Southern Song dynasty ci poet from Ningbo, Zhejiang, known for a dense, ornate style and about 340 surviving song lyrics.
Wu Zhuoliu
Wu Zhuoliu (吳濁流; born Wu Jiantian, 1900–1976) was a Hakka Taiwanese novelist and poet best known for Orphan of Asia, the first novel to explore Taiwanese identity under colonial rule.
Wu Zuxiang
Wu Zuxiang (吴组缃; 1908–1994) was a Chinese writer and literary scholar from Anhui, known for 1930s realist stories of rural life and Red Chamber scholarship.
Xavier Villaurrutia
Xavier Villaurrutia (1903–1950) was a Mexican poet, playwright, essayist, and critic, a leading figure of the Contemporáneos group best known for his nocturnos and the poetry collection Nostalgia de la muerte (1938).
Xaviera Hollander
Xaviera Hollander, born Xaviera de Vries in 1943, is a Dutch former call girl and brothel owner known for her 1971 bestselling memoir The Happy Hooker.
Xi Juan
Xi Juan is the pen name of Wu Zhenying, a Taiwanese romance novelist whose 1993 debut Love Across Time is considered the founding work of Chinese time-travel romance.
Xi Xi
Xi Xi (西西), pen name of Cheung Yin, was a Hong Kong writer of fiction, poetry, and essays whose 1975 novel My City is widely treated as a classic of Hong Kong literature.
Xia Wanchun
Xia Wanchun (夏完淳, 1631–1647) was a Chinese poet of the late Ming dynasty, a child prodigy who joined the anti-Qing resistance at fourteen and was executed at sixteen in Nanjing.