Writers and literary biographies

Francisco González Bocanegra

Francisco González Bocanegra (1824–1861) was a Mexican poet, orator, and dramatist from San Luis Potosí who wrote the lyrics of the Himno Nacional Mexicano, winning a government contest in 1854.

Francisco José Vasques Tenreiro (1921–1963) was a São Toméan poet, essayist, and geographer whose 1942 debut, Ilha de Nome Santo, inaugurated Lusophone Negritude; he co-edited the landmark 1953 anthology Poesia Negra de Expressão Portuguesa.

Francisco Madariaga

Francisco Madariaga (1927–2000) was an Argentine poet who fused surrealism with the landscapes and mythology of Corrientes province, winning the Premio Nacional de Poesía posthumously in 2005.

Francisco Sosa

Francisco Sosa, full name Francisco de Paula Sosa Escalante, was a Mexican biographer, journalist, poet, and historian known for Biografías de mexicanos distinguidos (1884), a collection of more than a hundred short lives of notable Mexicans.

Francisco Ximénez

Francisco Ximénez (1666 to about 1729) was a Spanish Dominican friar in Guatemala who made the only surviving transcription and first Spanish translation of the Popol Vuh.

Francisco Zarco

Francisco Zarco was a Mexican journalist, politician, and historian who championed freedom of the press, served in the Constituent Congress of 1856–1857, and held office under Benito Juárez.

Franco Sacchetti

Franco Sacchetti (1332–1400) was an Italian poet and novella writer, born at Ragusa to a Florentine merchant family, best known for his short-story collection the Trecentonovelle.

François Coppée

François Coppée (1842–1908) was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist called "the poet of the humble" for verse on ordinary Parisian lives, elected to the Académie française in 1884.

François de La Rochefoucauld

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) was a French nobleman and writer, one of the great moralists of seventeenth-century France, best known for his Maximes dissecting self-love and vanity.

François Mauriac

François Mauriac (1885–1970) was a French novelist, journalist, and member of the Académie française who won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature for novels of sin and grace set around Bordeaux.

François Rabelais

François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553), French Renaissance humanist, physician, and author of Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), satirical giant chronicles condemned by the Sorbonne; wrote as Alcofribas Nasier.

François Villon

François Villon (born François de Montcorbier, around 1431 in Paris) was a French poet of the late Middle Ages, known for his mock-testament poems and ballades; he disappeared after 1463.

François-René de Chateaubriand

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), French writer, diplomat, and politician; author of Atala, Le Génie du christianisme, René, and the posthumous Mémoires d'outre-tombe; founder of French Romanticism, foreign minister in 1822, elected to the Académie française in 1811.

Francysk Skaryna

Francysk Skaryna (Belarusian: Францыск Скарына), also Francis Skorina, was a Belarusian pioneer printer who produced the first printed Bible in Church Slavonic, beginning in Prague in 1517.

Franjo Marković

Franjo Marković (1845–1914) was a Croatian philosopher, poet, and theater critic who became the first professor of philosophy at the restored University of Zagreb in 1874.

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994), American horror, fantasy, and science-fiction writer of the Weird Tales era and Lovecraft circle; author of "The Hounds of Tindalos" and early Cthulhu Mythos hardcover fiction.

Frank Bidart

Frank Bidart is an American poet known for dramatic monologues, who won the 2017 National Book Award and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for his collected poems.

Frank Collymore

Frank Collymore (1893–1980) was a Barbadian teacher, poet, actor, and editor, best known for editing the literary magazine BIM and mentoring generations of West Indian writers.

Frank Hardy

Frank Hardy, born Francis Joseph Hardy (1917–1994), was an Australian novelist and communist activist whose 1950 novel Power Without Glory prompted one of Australia's most prominent criminal libel trials.

Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert (1920–1986), American science fiction author and journalist, creator of Dune (1965), the desert-planet epic that won the Nebula, shared the 1966 Hugo, sold about 20 million copies, and launched a six-novel series.

Frank Martinus Arion

Frank Martinus Arion, born Frank Efraim Martinus, was a Dutch-Caribbean writer, poet, and linguist from Curaçao, one of the most important Caribbean authors writing in Dutch.

Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt (Francis McCourt, 1930–2009), Irish-American memoirist and New York teacher, author of Angela's Ashes (1996), winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography; also wrote 'Tis and Teacher Man.

Frank Miller

Frank Miller (born 1957) is an American comic book writer and artist known for Daredevil, Ronin, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and 300, whose noir style helped bring mature themes into mainstream superhero comics.

Frank O'Connor

Frank O'Connor was the pen name of Michael Francis O'Donovan (1903–1966), an Irish writer from Cork best known for short stories and memoirs that established the Irish short story as a major genre.

Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966), American poet and MoMA curator, leading New York School figure; wrote Lunch Poems on lunch breaks, won posthumous 1972 National Book Award.

Frank Sargeson

Frank Sargeson, pen name of Norris Frank Davey (1903–1982), was a New Zealand short-story writer, novelist, and playwright who introduced everyday New Zealand speech into the country's literature.

Frank Thiess

Frank Thiess, real name Frank Theodor Thieß (1890–1977), was a German novelist and essayist of Baltic German origin whose bestselling naval novel Tsushima (1936) sold several hundred thousand copies.

Frank Yerby

Frank Garvin Yerby (1916–1991), Augusta, Georgia-born African American novelist, first Black writer with a million-selling novel, The Foxes of Harrow (1946); 33 novels, 55 million copies, exile in Madrid.

Frankétienne

Frankétienne, born Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d'Argent (1936–2025), was a Haitian writer, painter, and founder of Spiralism who wrote Dézafi, the first modern novel in Haitian Creole.