7- ] American Literature

7- American Literature 

List of American Writers .

This list of American writers is alphabetically ordered by period. The term writers is broadly defined to include philosophers, scientists, cookbook writers, critics, journalists, sociologists, historians, and even explorers, as well as poets and novelists. This list is limited, however, to those writers springing from the European tradition, including the work of African American writers who were schooled in the United States and others who were not by definition U.S. citizens but who wrote works of importance to American culture or American literature. It should also be noted that writers who overlap two periods are usually listed within the period that they wrote their most representative works.

Colonial era

William Bradford , Anne Bradstreet , Thomas Harriot , Increase Mather , Cotton Mather , Thomas Morton , Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca , William Penn , Samuel Sewall , John Smith , Edward Taylor , Nathaniel Ward , Michael Wigglesworth , Roger Williams , John Winthrop

The 18th century

Abigail Adams , Hannah Adams , John Adams , Conrad Beissel , Charles Brockden Brown , William Hill Brown , William Byrd , Jonathan Carver

, Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur , Joseph Dennie , John Dickinson , Joseph Rodman Drake , Timothy Dwight , Jonathan Edwards ,

Olaudah Equiano , Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson , Hannah Webster Foster ,

Benjamin Franklin , Philip Freneau , Samuel Griswold Goodrich , Alexander Hamilton , Samuel Hopkins , Thomas Jefferson , Sarah Kemble Knight , Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton , Judith Sargent Stevens Murray , Thomas Paine , Edward Taylor , Lucy Terry , John Trumbull , Royall Tyler ,

Mercy Otis Warren , Phillis Wheatley , John Woolman

The early 19th century to the end of the American Civil War

Jacob Abbott , Bronson Alcott , Delia Salter Bacon , Robert Montgomery Bird ,  Black Hawk , Maria Gowen Brooks , John Brougham , William Wells Brown , William Cullen Bryant , Anna Ella Carroll , Alice Cary , Phoebe Cary , William Ellery Channing , Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut , Lydia Maria Child , Ada Clare , James Fenimore Cooper , Maria Susanna Cummins , George William Curtis , Richard Henry Dana , Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis , Martin R. Delany , David Dickson , Frederick Douglass ,Mary Henderson Eastman , Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Margaret Fuller , William Lloyd Garrison , Caroline Howard Gilman , Angelina Emily Grimké , James Hall , Fitz-Greene Halleck , Frances E.W. Harper , George Washington Harris , Nathaniel Hawthorne , George Moses Horton ,  Washington Irving , Harriet A. Jacobs , John P. Kennedy , Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie , Abraham Lincoln , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Herman Melville , Adah Isaacs Menken , Harriet Mann Miller , Donald Grant Mitchell ,  Clement Clarke Moore , Anna Cora Mowatt , Mary Gove Nichols , Solomon Northup , Fitz-James O’Brien , Francis Parkman , Sara Payson Willis Parton , James Kirke Paulding , John Howard Payne , Mary Hayden Green Pike , Edgar Allan Poe , Catharine Maria Sedgwick , L.H. Sigourney , William Gilmore Simms , Seba Smith , Ann Sophia Stephens , Harriet Beecher Stowe ,

Henry David Thoreau , Henry Timrod , Sojourner Truth , Jones Very , David Walker , Mason Locke Weems , Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher , Sarah Helen Power Whitman , Walt Whitman , John Greenleaf Whittier , David Wilson , Harriet E. Wilson ,

The end of the Civil War to World War I

Charles Follen Adams , Henry Adams , William Taylor Adams , Louisa May Alcott , Isabella Macdonald Alden , Thomas Bailey Aldrich , Francesca Alexander , Horatio Alger , Elizabeth Anne Chase Akers Allen , Mary Austin ,

Joel Barlow , Katharine Lee Bates , L. Frank Baum , Clifford Whittingham Beers , Ethel Lynn Beers , David Belasco , Edward Bellamy , Ambrose Bierce ,

Lillie Devereux Blake , Dion Boucicault , Randolph Silliman Bourne , Hugh Henry Brackenridge , Gamaliel Bradford , Alice Brown , Orestes Augustus Brownson , Henry Cuyler Bunner , Frances Hodgson Burnett , John Burroughs , George W. Cable , Abraham Cahan , Charles W. Chesnutt

Kate Chopin , Winston Churchill , James Freeman Clarke , Rebecca Sophia Clarke , Florence Van Leer Earle Nicholson Coates , Frank Moore Colby ,

Moncure Daniel Conway , Rose Terry Cooke , Ina Donna Coolbrith , Anna Julia Cooper , Stephen Crane , Adelaide Crapsey , F. Marion Crawford , Fanny Crosby , Augustin Daly , Flora Adams Darling , Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis , Richard Harding Davis , John William DeForest , Emily Dickinson , Mary Abigail Dodge , Mary Mapes Dodge , Ignatius Donnelly ,

Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr , Theodore Dreiser , W.E.B. Du Bois , Paul Laurence Dunbar , Edward Eggleston , Ernest F. Fenollosa , Eugene Field ,

James T. Fields , Martha Finley , Harrison Grey Fiske , Clyde Fitch , Mary Anna Hallock Foote , Harold Frederic , Mary E. Wilkins Freeman , Jessie Ann Benton Frémont , Helen Hamilton Gardener , Hamlin Garland , Jeannette Leonard Gilder , William Hooker Gillette , Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Avrom Goldfaden , Anna Katharine Green , Charlotte Forten Grimké , Louise Imogen Guiney , Edward Everett Hale , Lucretia Peabody Hale , Sarah Josepha Hale , Frances E.W. Harper , Ida A. Husted Harper , Edward Harrigan , Joel Chandler Harris , Bret Harte , John Hay , Paul Hamilton Hayne , Lafcadio Hearn , O. Henry , James A. Herne , Marietta Holley , Oliver Wendell Holmes , Pauline Hopkins , Richard Hovey , Bronson Howard , Julia Ward Howe , William Dean llowells , Elbert Hubbard , Helen Hunt Jackson , Henry James , Sarah Orne Jewett , James Weldon Johnson ,

E.Z.C. Judson , John La Farge , Sidney Lanier , Emma Lazarus , Homer Lea ,

Charles Godfrey Leland , Jack London , James Russell Lowell , Steele MacKaye , Helen Marot , Brander Matthews , George Barr McCutcheon ,

Joaquin Miller , S. Weir Mitchell , William Vaughn Moody , Julia A. Moore ,

Margaret Warner Morley , Ellen Louise Chandler Moulton , Mary Noailles Murfree , Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson , Frank Norris , Thomas Nelson Page , Joseph Pennell , Nora Perry , Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt , Maria Louise Pool , Elizabeth Payson Prentiss , Howard Pyle , Opie Read ,

James Whitcomb Riley , Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson , O.E. Rölvaag ,

Susanna Rowson , Edgar Evertson Saltus , Benjamin Sanborn , Margaret Elizabeth Munson Sangster , William Gilmore Simms , Hannah Whitall Smith , Emma Southworth , Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford , Edmund Clarence Stedman , Frank Richard Stockton , Richard Henry Stoddard , Ida M. Tarbell , Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune , Celia Laighton Thaxter , Augustus Thomas , Rose Alnora Hartwick Thorpe , Thomas B. Thorpe , Mabel Loomis Todd , Kate Nichols Trask , Frederick Jackson Turner , Mark Twain , Mariana Alley Griswold Van Rensselaer , Frances Auretta Fuller Victor ,

Metta Victoria Fuller Victor , Lewis Wallace , Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

 , Susan Bogert Warner and Anna Bartlett Warner , Booker T. Washington ,

Jean Webster , Ida B. Wells-Barnett ,Edward Noyes Westcott , Edith Wharton , Walt Whitman , Adeline Dutton Train Whitney , Ella Wheeler Wilcox , Augusta Jane Evans Wilson , Owen Wister , Sarah Chauncey Woolsey , Constance Fenimore Woolson , Zitkala-Sa

From World War I to the end of World War II

Louis Adamic , Charles Follen Adams , Franklin Pierce Adams , Hannah Adams , Léonie Adams , Samuel Hopkins Adams , George Ade , Conrad Aiken , Maxwell Anderson , Regina M. Anderson , Sherwood Anderson ,

Katharine Anthony , Gertrude Atherton , Joseph Auslander , Irving Babbitt ,

Irving Bacheller , Ray Stannard Baker , Faith Baldwin , Djuna Barnes , Philip Barry , Vicki Baum , Sylvia Beach , S.N. Behrman , Robert Benchley , Stephen Vincent Benét , Gwendolyn Bennett , Aline Frankau Bernstein , Albert J. Beveridge , Earl Derr Biggers , John Peale Bishop , Marc Blitzstein ,

Maxwell Bodenheim , Arna Bontemps , Louis Bromfield , Cleanth Brooks , Van Wyck Brooks , Margaret Wise Brown , Gelett Burgess , Thornton W. Burgess , Kenneth Burke , Edgar Rice Burroughs , Virginia Lee Burton ,

James Branch Cabell , W.J. Cash , Willa Cather , Raymond Chandler ,

John Jay Chapman , Leslie Charteris , Mary Ellen Chase , Irvin S. Cobb ,

Robert P. Tristram Coffin , George M. Cohan , Marc Connelly , Jack Conroy , Jane Cowl , Malcolm Cowley , George Cram , Hart Crane , Frank Craven ,

Harry Crosby , Rachel Crothers , Countee Cullen , E.E. Cummings , Ève Curie , Donald Davidson , H.L. Davis , Margaret Deland , Floyd Dell , Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) , John Dos Passos , Ruth Draper , Theodore Dreiser , Alice Dunbar Nelson , Fannie Pearson Hardy Eckstorm , T.S. Eliot , John Erskine ,

James T. Farrell , William Faulkner , Jessie Redmon Fauset , Kenneth Fearing , Edna Ferber , Dorothy Canfield Fisher , Rudolph Fisher , Dudley Fitts , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Douglas Southall Freeman , Robert Frost , Henry Blake Fuller , Wanda Hazel Gág , Zona Gale , Erle Stanley Gardner , Howard R. Garis , Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould , Ira Gershwin , Khalil Gibran , Ellen Glasgow , Susan Glaspell , Zane Grey , Angelina Weld Grimké , Edgar A. Guest , Louise Closser Hale , Moyshe Leyb Halpern , Moss Hart ,

Lillian Hellman , Ernest Hemingway , Joseph Hergesheimer , DuBose Heyward , Granville Hicks, Ralph Hodgson , Sidney Howard , E.W. Howe , Langston Hughes , Zora Neale Hurston , Robinson Jeffers , James Weldon Johnson , Osa Johnson , George S. Kaufman ,George Kelly , Joyce Kilmer ,

George Lyman Kittredge , Oliver La Farge , Ring Lardner , Nella Larsen ,

Meridel Le Sueur , Sinclair Lewis , Vachel Lindsay , Hugh Lofting , H.P. Lovecraft , Amy Lowell , John Livingston Lowes , Mina Loy , Clare Boothe Luce , Charles MacArthur , Percy MacKaye , Archibald MacLeish , Frances Marion , Edwin Markham , Edgar Lee Masters , F.O. Matthiessen , Robert McAlmon , Claude McKay , H.L. Mencken , Edna St. Vincent Millay , Alice Duer Miller , Margaret Mitchell , Harriet Monroe , Marianne Moore , Paul Elmer More , John Gneisenau Neihardt , Richard Nugent , Rose Cecil O’Neill , Clifford Odets , Tillie Olsen , Dorothy Parker , Vernon L. Parrington ,  Josephine Preston Peabody , Lucy Fitch Perkins , Maxwell Perkins , Ralph Barton Perry , David Pinski , Eleanor Hodgman Porter , Gene Stratton Porter , Katherine Anne Porter , Ezra Pound , Ellery Queen , Philip Rahv , John Crowe Ransom , Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings , Lizette Woodworth Reese ,

Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice , Elmer Rice , Laura Riding , Ameen Rihani ,

Mary Roberts Rinehart , Elizabeth Madox Roberts , Kenneth Roberts ,

Edwin Arlington Robinson , Henry Roth , Damon Runyon , Carl Sandburg , Anne Douglas Sedgwick , Ernest Thompson Seton , Charles Monroe Sheldon ,

Robert E. Sherwood , Constance Lindsay Skinner , Gertrude Stein , Wallace Stevens , Michael Strange , Edward Stratemeyer , Genevieve Taggard , Booth Tarkington , Allen Tate , Sara Teasdale , Albert Payson Terhune , Dorothy Thompson , Wallace Henry Thurman , Eunice Tietjens , Jean Toomer , Ridgely Torrence , Lionel Trilling , S.S. Van Dine , Carl Van Doren , Mark Van Doren , Henry Van Dyke , Carl Van Vechten , Carolyn Wells , Nathanael West , Edith Wharton , Laura Ingalls Wilder , Thornton Wilder , William Carlos Williams , Edmund Wilson ,  Yvor Winters ,  Thomas Wolfe , Richard Wright , Elinor Wylie , Post-World War II , Edward Abbey , George Abbott ,

Walter Abish , M.H. Abrams , Jill Abramson , Diane Ackerman, Goodman Ace , Kathy Acker , Renata Adler , James Agee , Conrad Aiken , Edward Albee , Sherman Alexie , Nelson Algren , Paula Gunn Allen , Woody Allen ,

Svetlana Alliluyeva , Joseph Alsop , A.R. Ammons , Rudolfo A. Anaya ,

Poul Anderson , Roger Angell , Maya Angelou , Kenneth Anger , David Antin , Kwame Anthony Appiah , Max Apple , Harriette Arnow , Sholem Asch , John Ashbery , Isaac Asimov , Brooke Russell Astor , Louis Auchincloss , W.H. Auden , Jean Auel , Paul Auster , Pearl Bailey , Augusta Braxton Baker , Carlos Baker , Russell Baker , James Baldwin , Toni Cade Bambara , Russell Banks , Amiri Baraka , Red Barber , John Barth , Donald Barthelme ,  Frederick Barthelme , W. Jackson Bate , Ann Beattie , Alison Bechdel , Saul Bellow , Nina Berberova , Gertrude Berg , Thomas Berger , Daniel Berrigan,

Wendell Berry , John Berryman , Alfred Bester , Frank Bidart , Elizabeth Bishop , Richard Bissell , James Blish , Allan Bloom , Harold Bloom , Judy Blume , Robert Bly , Louise Bogan , Wayne C. Booth , Anthony Boucher ,

Catherine Bowen , Jane Bowles , Paul Bowles , Kay Boyle , Ray Bradbury ,

Roark Bradford , Ben Bradlee , Marion Zimmer Bradley , Richard Brautigan , Jimmy Breslin , John Malcolm Brinnin , Harold Brodkey , Joseph Brodsky ,

Gwendolyn Brooks , Richard Brooks , Van Wyck Brooks , Claude Brown , Dan Brown , Helen Gurley Brown , Sterling Brown , Tina Brown , Pearl S. Buck , Charles Bukowski , Ed Bullins , William S. Burroughs , Frederick Busch , Octavia E. Butler , James M. Cain , Erskine Caldwell , Taylor Caldwell , Hortense Calisher , Bebe Moore Campbell , John W. Campbell ,

Truman Capote , Robert Caro , John Dickson Carr , Hayden Carruth , Raymond Carver , Ana Castillo , Michael Chabon , Joseph Chaikin , Raymond Chandler , Paddy Chayefsky , John Cheever , Alice Childress ,

John Ciardi , Sandra Cisneros , Amy Clampitt , Tom Clancy ,

Walter van Tilburg Clark , Beverly Cleary , Hal Clement , Eldridge Cleaver ,

Lucille Clifton , Billy Collins , Jackie Collins , Suzanne Collins ,Padraic Colum , Betty Comden , Evan S. Connell , Marc Connelly , Robert Coover ,

Alfred Corn , Patricia Cornwell , Gregory Corso , Jayne Cortez , Bill Cosby ,

Thomas B. Costain , Norman Cousins , Malcolm Cowley , James Gould Cozzens , Robert Creeley , Frederick C. Crews , Michael Crichton , Stanley Crouch , Mary Crow Dog , R. Crumb , James Crumley , J.V. Cunningham ,

Christopher Paul Curtis , Edwidge Danticat , Henry Darger , Donald Davidson , Angela Davis , Lydia Davis , Ossie Davis , Paul de Man , Agnes de Mille , Peter De Vries , Samuel R. Delany , Don DeLillo , Maya Deren , Kiran Desai , Babette Deutsch , Diane di Prima , Abby Morton Diaz , Kate DiCamillo , Philip K. Dick , James Dickey , Joan Didion , Annie Dillard ,

Thomas Dixon , Stephen Dobyns , E.L. Doctorow , Owen Dodson , Sam Donaldson , J.P. Donleavy , Rita Dove , Andre Dubus , Alan Dugan , Henry Dumas , Robert Duncan , John Gregory Dunne , Ariel and Will Durant ,

Richard Eberhart , Leon Edel , Jennifer Egan , Dave Eggers , Will Eisner ,

Lonne Elder III , Stanley Elkin , Harlan Ellison , Ralph Ellison , Richard Ellmann , James Ellroy , Nora Ephron , Louise Erdrich , Janet Evanovich ,

Mari Evans , William Everson , Clifton Fadiman , John Fante , Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Leslie Fiedler , Harvey Fierstein , Shulamith Firestone , M.F.K. Fisher , Robert Fitzgerald , Janet Flanner , Gillian Flynn , Horton Foote ,

Shelby Foote , Carolyn Forché , Richard Ford , Maria Irene Fornés , Leon Forrest , James Franco , Jonathan Franzen , Michael Fried , Bruce Jay Friedman , Charles Fuller , William Gaddis , Ernest J. Gaines , Tess Gallagher , John Gardner ,William H. Gass , Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , James Maurice Gavin , Theodor Seuss Geisel , Jack Gelber , Elizabeth George ,

Zulfikar Ghose , William Gibson , Brendan Gill , Allen Ginsberg , Nikki Giovanni , Malcolm Gladwell , Jacob Glatstein , Louise Glück ,Gail Godwin ,

Horace Gold , Albert Goldbarth , Amy Goodman , William Goldman , Mary Gordon , Ruth Gordon , Edward Gorey ,Chaim Grade , Sue Grafton , Jorie Graham , Shirley Ann Grau , Julien Green , Paul Green , Stephen Greenblatt , Horace Gregory , John Grisham , John Guare , Thom Gunn , A.B. Guthrie, Jr. , Rosa Guy , David Halberstam , Alex Haley , Donald Hall , Edith Hamilton , Dashiell Hammett , Daniel Handler , Barry Hannah , Lorraine Hansberry , Joseph Hansen ,Elizabeth Hardwick , Joy Harjo , Michael S. Harper , Michael Harrington , E. Lynn Harris , Jim Harrison , Geoffrey H. Hartman , Robert Hass , Ethan Hawke , John Hawkes , Robert Hayden ,

Shirley Hazzard , Anthony Hecht , Ben Hecht , Carolyn Heilbrun , Robert A. Heinlein , Joseph Heller , Lillian Hellman , Aleksandar Hemon , Beth Henley ,

Frank Herbert , John Hersey , Patricia Highsmith , Oscar Hijuelos , Chester Himes , Christopher Hitchens , Edward Hoagland , Russell Hoban , Laura Z. Hobson , Abbie Hoffman , Alice Hoffman , Daniel Hoffman , A.M. Homes , Bell Hooks , Paul Horgan , Khaled Hosseini , Richard Howard , Irving Howe ,

L. Ron Hubbard , Arianna Huffington , Josephine Humphreys , Evan Hunter , Fannie Hurst , David Henry Hwang , David Ignatow , William Inge , John Irving , Christopher Isherwood , Shirley Jackson , Randall Jarrell , Ricky Jay , Ha Jin , Diane Johnson , Edward P. Jones , James Jones , June Jordan

Matthew Josephson , Donald Justice ,Gil Kane , Garson Kanin , Rosabeth Moss Kanter , MacKinlay Kantor , Justin Kaplan , Bob Kaufman , Alfred Kazin , Garrison Keillor , William Kennedy , Jack Kerouac , Jean Kerr

Ken Kesey , Jamaica Kincaid , Stephen King , Barbara Kingsolver , Maxine Hong Kingston , Galway Kinnell , James Kirkwood , Carolyn Kizer , Etheridge Knight , John Knowles , Kenneth Koch , Annette Kolodny ,

Yusef Komunyakaa ,  Ted Kooser , Arthur Kopit , C.M. Kornbluth , Jerzy Kosinski , Richard Kostelanetz , Larry Kramer , Irving Kristol , Joseph Wood Krutch , Joe Kubert , Maxine Kumin , Stanley Kunitz , Tony Kushner ,

Emeril Lagasse , Jhumpa Lahiri , Louis L’Amour , Kristin Hunter Lattany ,

Richmond Lattimore , James Laughlin , John Howard Lawson , Eva Le Gallienne , Ursula K. Le Guin , Meridel Le Sueur , Jim Lehrer , Fritz Leiber ,

Madeleine L’Engle , Elmore Leonard , Alan Jay Lerner , Tracy Letts , Denise Levertov , Meyer Levin , Philip Levine , Walter Lippmann , John Lithgow ,

Joshua Logan , Alan Lomax , Haniel Long , Anita Loos , Barry Lopez , Audre Lorde , Robert Lowell , Robert Ludlum , Alison Lurie , Cynthia Macdonald ,

Dwight Macdonald , John D. MacDonald , Ross Macdonald , Helen Clark MacInnes , Archibald MacLeish , Haki R. Madhubuti , Gregory Maguire ,

Norman Mailer , Bernard Malamud , Dumas Malone , David Mamet , Herman Mankiewicz , Thomas Mann , Marya Mannes , J.P. Marquand ,

Paule Marshall , George R.R. Martin , Bobbie Ann Mason , Peter Matthiessen , Armistead Maupin , Elsa Maxwell , William Maxwell , Anne McCaffrey ,

Cormac McCarthy , Mary McCarthy , Frank McCourt , Carson McCullers ,

David McCullough , Joseph McElroy , Phyllis McGinley , Thomas McGuane ,

Danica McKellar , Terry McMillan , Larry McMurtry , Terrence McNally ,

William H. McNeill , John McPhee , James Alan McPherson , William Meredith , Ethel Merman , James Merrill ,  Thomas Merton , W.S. Merwin ,

Stephenie Meyer , Leonard Michaels , James Michener , Bette Midler , Arthur Miller , Frank Miller , Henry Miller , J. Hillis Miller , May Miller

, Kate Millett , Czesław Miłosz , Jessica Mitford , N. Scott Momaday , Paul Monette , Colleen Moore , Marianne Moore , Michael Moore , Samuel Eliot Morison , Christopher Morley , Wright Morris , Toni Morrison , Walter Mosley , Howard Moss , Lisel Mueller , Bharati Mukherjee , Albert Murray

 , Vladimir Nabokov , Ogden Nash , Gloria Naylor , Howard Nemerov , Allan Nevins , Beaumont Newhall , Nancy Newhall , Anaïs Nin , Andre Norton ,

Joyce Carol Oates , Tim O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor , Frank O’Hara , John Henry O’Hara , Eugene O’Neill , Sharon Olds , Mary Oliver , Tillie Olsen ,

Charles Olson , Elder Olson , George Oppen , Cynthia Ozick , Camille Paglia ,

Grace Paley , Sara Paretsky , Gordon Parks , Suzan-Lori Parks , Kenneth Patchen , Ann Patchett , James Patterson , Harvey Pekar , William Pène du Bois , Walker Percy , S.J. Perelman , Tyler Perry , Joseph E. Persico , Roger Tory Peterson , Harry Mark Petrakis , Ann Petry , Steven Pinker , Robert Pinsky , Sylvia Plath , Frederik Pohl , Marie Ponsot , Charles Portis , Chaim Potok , Gabriel Preil , Reynolds Price , Harold Prince , Frederic Prokosch ,

E. Annie Proulx , James Purdy , Samuel Whitehall Putnam , Thomas Pynchon , Anna Quindlen , Gregory Rabassa , David Rabe , Ayn Rand , John Crowe Ransom , John Rechy , Ishmael Reed, Kathy Reichs , Kenneth Rexroth ,

Charles Reznikoff , Anne Rice , Adrienne Rich , Conrad Michael Richter ,

Faith Ringgold , Harold Robbins , Tom Robbins , Nora Roberts , Carolyn M. Rodgers , Theodore Roethke , Henry Rollins , Holmes Rolston III , Mickey Rooney , Leo Rosten , Henry Roth , Philip Roth , Muriel Rukeyser , Joanna Russ , Kay Ryan , William Safire , Carl Sagan , Edward Said , Adela Rogers St. Johns , J.D. Salinger , James Salter , Sonia Sanchez , Mari Sandoz

Sapphire , Winthrop Sargeant , William Saroyan , May Sarton , John Sayles ,

Dore Schary , Budd Schulberg , James Schuyler , Delmore Schwartz , Jon Scieszka , David Sedaris , Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick , Hubert Selby, Jr. , Anne Sexton , Delmore Schwartz , Maurice Sendak , Ramón José Sender , Anya Seton , Anne Sexton , Ntozake Shange , Karl Shapiro , Irwin Shaw , Wallace Shawn , Wilfrid Sheed , Elaine Showalter , Leslie Marmon Silko , Shel Silverstein , Charles Simic , David Simon , Kate Simon , Louis Simpson ,

I.J. Singer , Isaac Bashevis Singer , B.F. Skinner , Cornelia Otis Skinner ,

Jane Smiley , Tavis Smiley , Anna Deavere Smith , E.E. Smith , Kate Smith ,

Lee Smith , William Jay Smith , Robert Smithson , W.D. Snodgrass , Gary Snyder , Susan Sontag , Aaron Sorkin , Gilbert Sorrentino , Terry Southern ,

Nicholas Sparks , Art Spiegelman , Mickey Spillane , Jean Stafford , William Stafford , Danielle Steel , Wallace Stegner , John Steinbeck , Bruce Sterling ,

Richard G. Stern , R.L. Stine , Irving Stone , Robert Stone , Rex Stout , Mark Strand , Anna Louise Strong , Theodore Sturgeon , William Styron , May Swenson , Amy Tan , James Tate , Peter Taylor , Studs Terkel , Paul Theroux , Lewis Thomas , Hunter S. Thompson , Jim Thompson , Kay Thompson ,

James Thurber , James Tiptree, Jr. , Michael Todd , Melvin Tolson , Natasha Trethewey , Dalton Trumbo , Scott Turow , Anne Tyler , Louis Untermeyer ,

John Updike , Leon Uris , Mona Van Duyn , Melvin Van Peebles , Amy Vanderbilt , Gloria Vanderbilt , Gore Vidal , Bert Vogelstein , Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. , Diane Wakoski , Alice Walker , Margaret Walker , David Foster Wallace , Chris Ware , Robert Penn Warren , Wendy Wasserstein ,

Orson Welles , Eudora Welty , Cornel West , Dorothy West , Jessamyn West ,

William Wharton , E.B. White , Edmund White , Theodore H. White , Phyllis Ayame Whitney , Reed Whittemore , John Edgar Wideman , Elie Wiesel ,

Richard Wilbur , George Will , August Wilson , Edmund Wilson , Lanford Wilson , C.K. Williams , Tennessee Williams , Al Williamson , Yvor Winters,

Larry Woiwode , Tom Wolfe , Tobias Wolff , Douglas Woolf , Herman Wouk ,

Charles Wright , James Wright , Frank Yerby , Marguerite Young , Marguerite Yourcenar , Zhang Ailing , Paul Zindel , Louis Zukofsky