Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which included his iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
Ken Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
Wallace Earle Stegner was an American novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and historian, often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.
Richard Watson Gilder was an American poet and editor.
Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938) was an American author and illustrator. She is best known for her illustrated short stories and novels portraying life in the mining communities of the turn-of-the-century American West.
Bernard Augustine DeVoto was an American historian, conservationist, essayist, columnist, teacher, editor, and reviewer. He was the author of a series of Pulitzer-Prize-winning popular histories of the American West and for many years wrote The Easy Chair, an influential column in Harper's Magazine. DeVoto also wrote several well-regarded novels and during the 1950s served as a speech-writer for Adlai Stevenson. His friend and biographer, Wallace Stegner described DeVoto as "flawed, brilliant, provocative, outrageous, ... often wrong, often spectacularly right, always stimulating, sometimes infuriating, and never, never dull."
Walter Van Tilburg Clark was an American novelist, short story writer, and educator. He ranks as one of Nevada's most distinguished literary figures of the 20th century, and was the first inductee into the 'Nevada Writers Hall of Fame' in 1988, together with Robert Laxalt, Clark's mentee and Nevada's other heralded twentieth century author. Two of Clark's novels, The Ox-Bow Incident and The Track of the Cat, were made into films. As a writer, Clark taught himself to use the familiar materials of the western saga to explore the human psyche and to raise deep philosophical issues.
The Knocker, Knacker, or Tommyknocker (US) is a mythical, subterranean, gnome-like creature in Cornish and Devon folklore. The Welsh counterparts are coblynau. It is closely related to the Irish leprechaun, Kentish kloker and the English and Scottish brownie. The Cornish described the creature as a little person 2 ft 0 in (0.61 m) tall, with a disproportionately large head, long arms, wrinkled skin, and white whiskers. It wears a tiny version of standard miner's garb and commits random mischief, such as stealing miners' unattended tools and food.
Ivan Doig was an American author and novelist, widely known for his sixteen fiction and non-fiction books set mostly in his native Montana, celebrating the landscape and people of the post-war American West.
New Almaden, known in Spanish as Nueva Almadén, is a historic community and former mercury mine in the Capitancillos Hills of San Jose, California, located at the southwestern point of Almaden Valley in South San Jose. New Almaden is divided into two parts: the mines and much of their immediate surroundings, including historic ghost town settlements in the Capintancillas, which together form the Almaden Quicksilver County Park, and the largely residential historic district surrounding the Casa Grande.
David Ebershoff is an American writer, editor, and teacher. His debut novel, The Danish Girl, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 2015, while his third novel, The 19th Wife, was adapted into a television movie of the same name in 2010.
The Broom of the System is the first novel by the American writer David Foster Wallace, published in 1987.
Originating in New England, one particular Beecher family in the 19th century was a political family notable for issues of religion, civil rights, and social reform. Notable members of the family include clergy, educators, authors and artists. Many of the family were Yale-educated and advocated for abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights. Some of the family provided material or ideological support to the Union in the American Civil War. The family is of English descent.
Philip L. Fradkin was an American environmentalist historian, journalist, and author. Fradkin authored books ranging from Alaska, California, and Nevada, with topics ranging from water conservation, earthquakes, and nuclear weapons.
Arthur De Wint Foote (1849–1933) was an American civil engineer and mining engineer who impacted the development of the American West with his innovative engineering works and entrepreneurial ventures. In Northern California in the late 1890s, he designed and built the North Star Mine Powerhouse, the highest capacity impulse-turbine power-plant of the time, and now a California historic landmark; within that plant he designed and installed the then-largest Pelton wheel turbine. Later, he designed and built Foote's Crossing, a high bridge, and Foote's Crossing Road, both now memorialized as California and U.S. landmarks.
Sands Hall is an American writer, theatre director, actor, and musician.
William Henry Beecher was a dyspeptic minister who was called "The Unlucky" because misfortune attended all his ventures.
North Star House is a house located roughly a mile south of Grass Valley, Nevada County, northern California. The building served as the superintendent's house for the North Star Mine. Commissioned by Superintendent Arthur De Wint Foote and his wife, Mary Hallock Foote ("Molly"), an author and illustrator, it was designed in 1905 by the architect Julia Morgan. This was her first significant, large-scale, residential project. The house is notable for its relationship to the literary career of Molly Foote and the master architect, Morgan.
Crossing to Safety is a 1987 semi-autobiographical novel by "The Dean of Western Writers", Wallace Stegner. It gained broad literary acclaim and commercial popularity.
Elizabeth MacLeod Sturges Leggett, also known as Bessie Leggett or Betty Leggett, was an American socialite, letter writer, and disciple of the Hindu monk and philosopher Swami Vivekananda.
