6,282 articles
Balys Sruoga
Balys Sruoga (1896–1947) was a Lithuanian writer, poet, playwright, and university professor, best known for Forest of the Gods, his memoir of imprisonment in the Nazi Stutthof concentration camp.
Banana Yoshimoto
Banana Yoshimoto (吉本ばなな; real name Yoshimoto Mahoko) is a Japanese novelist born in Tokyo in 1964, best known for her debut Kitchen (1987) and fiction about loss and healing, published in over 30 countries.
Banaphool
Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, best known by his pen name Banaphool, was an Indian Bengali writer and physician who wrote hundreds of short stories, novels, and plays.
Bằng Việt
Bằng Việt, pen name of Nguyễn Việt Bằng, is a Vietnamese poet born in 1941, best known for "Bếp lửa", studied by millions of Vietnamese school students.
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson (1864–1941), Australian bush balladist, solicitor and war correspondent, author of 'The Man from Snowy River', 'Clancy of the Overflow' and 'Waltzing Matilda'; Bulletin Debate rival of Henry Lawson; CBE 1939.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (বঙ্কিম চন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়)
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, also known as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (বঙ্কিম চন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়), was an Indian Bengali novelist born in 1838 whose Anandamath contains Vande Mataram.
Banu Mushtaq (ಬಾನು ಮುಸ್ತಾಕ್)
Banu Mushtaq (ಬಾನು ಮುಸ್ತಾಕ್), born 1948 in Hassan, Karnataka, is a Kannada writer, lawyer and activist of the Bandaya protest movement whose collection Heart Lamp, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, won the 2025 International Booker Prize, the first short-story collection and first Kannada work to win.
Bảo Ninh
Bảo Ninh (Hoàng Ấu Phương, born 1952) is a Vietnamese novelist, author of Nỗi buồn chiến tranh (The Sorrow of War), translated into about 20 languages, winner of the 1994 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and 2016 Simhun Prize.
Bapsi Sidhwa
Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-2024), Pakistani Parsi novelist, author of Cracking India (Ice-Candy-Man) and The Crow Eaters; wrote five novels on Partition, Parsi identity, and women, adapted by Deepa Mehta.
Barbara Cartland
Barbara Cartland (1901-2000), English romance novelist billed as the Queen of Romance, wrote 723 books dictated at about 7,000 words a day, selling 750 million to over a billion copies in 36 languages.
Barbara Hambly
Barbara Hambly (born 1951, San Diego) is an American novelist of fantasy, science fiction, and historical mystery, known for the Darwath Trilogy, the Windrose Chronicles, the Benjamin January mysteries, and Star Trek and Star Wars tie-in novels.
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver (born 1955) is an American novelist, essayist, and poet of socially engaged fiction. Author of The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and the Pulitzer-winning Demon Copperhead; only two-time Women's Prize winner and 2024 National Book Award lifetime achievement honoree.
Barbara Park
Barbara Lynne Park (1947-2013), American children's author, creator of the Junie B. Jones series begun in 1992; also wrote Skinnybones and Mick Harte Was Here; over 50 books.
Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym, born Barbara Mary Crampton Pym (1913 to 1980), was an English novelist of comic manners about unmarried women and Anglican clergy, revived in 1977 after sixteen years unpublished.
Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, born Barbu Ștefan, was a Romanian novelist, dramatist, journalist, lawyer, and politician, best known for the historical trilogy Apus de soare, Viforul, and Luceafărul.
Bard
Bard: a Celtic professional poet (Welsh bardd, Irish bard) employed by patrons to praise them in verse; distinct from minstrel and skald, later any serious or epic poet, and in modern Wales an Eisteddfod-recognized poet.
Barış Bıçakçı
Barış Bıçakçı (born 1966, Adana) is a Turkish novelist, short-story writer, and translator whose plain, minimalist fiction is set almost entirely in Ankara, making him closely identified with the capital in contemporary Turkish literature.
Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez (1945–2020) was an American essayist and short story writer whose works include Of Wolves and Men and Arctic Dreams, which won the National Book Award.
Baru Chandidas
Baru Chandidas (বড়ু চণ্ডীদাস) is the medieval Bengali poet who composed Srikrishnakirtan, a narrative poem of about 8,500 lines on the love of Krishna and Radha.
Bashir Badr
Bashir Badr (بشیر بدر), born Syed Muhammad Bashir, was an Indian Urdu poet who gave the modern ghazal a plain, conversational language, winning the Padma Shri in 1999.
Bayani (historian)
Bayani, born Muhammad Yusuf Bek, was a Khivan poet, historian, and court official under the Khiva khans who wrote the Shajara-yi khwarazmshahi, a general history of Khorezm, before his death in 1923.
Beat Generation
Beat Generation: 1950s American literary and social movement centered in Greenwich Village, North Beach, and Venice West; key figures Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs; defining works On the Road, Howl, Naked Lunch; forerunner of 1960s counterculture.
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is a Franco-Rwandan writer of novels, short stories, and poetry whose work centers on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, memory, and exile between generations.
Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), British author-illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and 23 Tales selling over 250 million copies; also mycologist, Herdwick sheep farmer, and National Trust benefactor who left over 4,000 Lake District acres.
Beatriz Guido
Beatriz Guido (1922–1988) was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter whose political novels made her one of Argentina's most widely read writers of the 1950s to 1970s.
Beatriz Sarlo
Beatriz Sarlo (1942–2024) was an Argentine literary and cultural critic, essayist, and professor of Argentine literature, known for co-founding the magazine Punto de Vista and writing on Argentine modernity and memory.
Beau Willimon
Beau Willimon (Pack Beauregard Willimon, born 1977) is an American playwright and screenwriter, creator of Netflix's House of Cards, Oscar-nominated for The Ides of March, writer on Andor and Severance.
Begziin Yavuukhulan
Begziin Yavuukhulan (Бэгзийн Явуухулан; 1929–1982) was a Mongolian lyric poet, considered an innovator of the second generation of Mongolian modern poetry, whose work has been published in about 70 languages.
Behçet Necatigil
Behçet Necatigil, born Mehmet Behçet (1916–1979), was a Turkish poet, writer, and translator known for poems about the house, family, and everyday life of the middle-class city dweller.
Beijing school
The Beijing school (京派) was a school of Chinese writers active in Beiping and Tianjin in the 1930s, emphasizing aesthetic value and known for pastoral fiction by writers like Shen Congwen.