Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations. He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts (2006), won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.
Moyez G. Vassanji is a Canadian novelist and editor, who writes under the name M. G. Vassanji. Vassanji's work has been translated into several languages. As of 2020, he has published nine novels, as well as two short-fiction collections and two nonfiction books. Vassanji's writings, which have received considerable critical acclaim, often focus on issues of colonial history, migration, diaspora, citizenship, gender and ethnicity.
Aharon Appelfeld was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor.
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American novelist, critic and political activist, best known for her novel The Group, her marriage to critic Edmund Wilson, and her storied feud with playwright Lillian Hellman. McCarthy was the winner of the Horizon Prize in 1949 and was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1949 and 1959. She was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome. In 1973, she delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title Can There Be a Gothic Literature? The same year she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She won the National Medal for Literature and the Edward MacDowell Medal in 1984. McCarthy held honorary degrees from Bard, Bowdoin, Colby, Smith College, Syracuse University, the University of Maine at Orono, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Hull.
Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.
Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics.
Clancy Sigal was an American writer, and the author of dozens of essays and seven books, the best-known of which is the autobiographical novel Going Away (1961).
Larry Curtis Heinemann was an American novelist born and raised in Chicago. His published work – three novels and a memoir – is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War.
Rigoberto González is an American writer and book critic. He is an editor and author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual children's books, and self-identifies in his writing as a gay Chicano. His most recent project is Latino Poetry, a Library of America anthology, which gathers verse that spans from the 17th century to the present day. His memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He is the 2015 recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle, the 2020 recipient of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and the 2024 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Gabriel David Josipovici is a British novelist, short story writer, critic, literary theorist, and playwright. He is an Emeritus professor, after having been Professor at the University of Sussex.
A Rumor of War is a 1977 memoir by Philip Caputo about his service in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in the early years of the Vietnam War.
Keith Maillard is a Canadian-American novelist, poet, and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. He moved to Canada in 1970 and became a Canadian citizen in 1976.
James Carroll is an American author, historian, journalist, and former Catholic priest. He has written extensively about the contemporary effort to reform the Catholic Church, and has published not only novels, but also books on religion and history. He has received nine honorary doctorates, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Tom Bissell is an American journalist, critic, and writer, best known for his extensive work as a writer of video games, including The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Battlefield Hardline, and Gears 5. His work has been adapted into films by Julia Loktev, Werner Herzog and James Franco.
Lucinda Laura Franks was an American journalist, novelist, and memoirist. Franks won a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for her reporting on the life of Diana Oughton, a member of Weather Underground. With that award she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer for National Reporting, and the youngest person ever to win any Pulitzer. She published four books, including two memoirs, and worked as a staff writer at The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan, better known as C. D. B. Bryan, was an American author and journalist.
Peter Northe Wells was a New Zealand writer, filmmaker, and historian. He was mainly known for his fiction, but also explored his interest in gay and historical themes in a number of expressive drama and documentary films from the 1980s onwards.
Arthur R. Flowers, Jr. is an American novelist, memoirist, and performance poet. His work is known for its focus on the African-American experience, particularly folklore, blues music, and hoodoo spiritualism.
