Edith Wharton emerged as one of America’s most insightful novelists, deftly exposing the tensions between societal expectation and personal desire through her vivid portrayals of upper-class life. Dra…
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); …
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master…
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Su…
Nellallitea 'Nella' Larsen (first called Nellie Walker) was an American novelist of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote two novels and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, what she …
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of powerful, sometimes controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerned racial themes. His work helped rede…
Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and femin…
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for …
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an author, essayist and political activist, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity.
Edward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M. Forster, was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class differenc…
Born to free parents in Baltimore, Maryland. After her mother died when she was three years old in 1828, Watkins was orphaned. She was raised by her aunt and uncle. She was educated at the Academy for…
William Wells Brown was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, wh…
Traditionally considered the first female African-American novelist as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig was publis…
Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent Africans involved in the British movement of the abolition for the slave trade. Although enslaved as a young man, he purcha…
Hannah Bond, pen name Hannah Crafts (b.ca.1830s), was an African-American writer who escaped from slavery in North Carolina about 1857 and went to the North. Bond settled in New Jersey, likely married…
Elizabeth Drew Barstow studied at Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Massachusetts. After her marriage in 1852 to poet Richard Henry Stoddard, the couple settled permanently in New York City, where they belon…
Sutton Elbert Griggs was an African-American author, Baptist minister, and social activist. He is best known for Imperium in Imperio, a utopian work that envisions a separate African-American state wi…
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930) was a prominent African-American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic nove…
ELIZABETH ACEVEDO is a New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, With the Fire on High, and Clap When You Land. Her critically-acclaimed debut novel, The Poet X, won the 2018 National Book Awar…
Mason Deaver is a bestselling and award-winning author of young adult and adult romance novels. Their books have been awarded stars from Bookpage and Booklist, nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award…
