Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character s…
Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in…
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is oft…
Diana Jean Gabaldon Watkins grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona and is of Hispanic and English descent (with a dash of Native American and Sephardic Jew). She has earned three degrees: a B.S. in Zoology, a …
Pablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in Parral, Chile, was a poet, diplomat, and politician, widely considered one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th cen…
Allen Ginsberg was a groundbreaking American poet and activist best known for his central role in the Beat Generation and for writing the landmark poem Howl. Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jew…
Vladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Pete…
Born Joyce Glassman to a Jewish family in Queens, New York, Joyce was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just around the corner from the apartment of William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer Bur…
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 …
Shirley Jackson was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as S…
Jean Rhys, CBE (born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams; 24 August 1890–14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resid…
John Clellon Holmes, born in Holyoke Massachusetts, was an author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel Go. Go is considered the first "Beat" novel, and depicted events in his life with f…
Works, such as the novels The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947), of Algerian-born French writer and philosopher Albert Camus concern the absurdity of the human condition; he won the Nobel …
Robin Sloan is the author of the novels Sourdough, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, and Moonbound, all published in the U.S. by MCD. He grew up in Michigan and now splits his time between the San Fra…
William Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generatio…
