John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Roger Angell was an American essayist known for his writing on sports, especially baseball. He was a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years. He wrote numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, and criticism, and for many years wrote an annual Christmas poem for The New Yorker.
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.
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism, a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques. Much of Wolfe's work was satirical and centred on the counterculture of the 1960s and issues related to class, social status, and the lifestyles of the economic and intellectual elites of New York City.
John Henry O'Hara was one of America's most prolific writers of short stories, credited with helping to invent The New Yorker magazine short story style. He became a best-selling novelist before the age of 30 with Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. While O'Hara's legacy as a writer is debated, his work was praised by such contemporaries as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his champions rank him highly among the major under-appreciated American writers of the 20th century. Few college students educated after O'Hara's death in 1970 have discovered him, chiefly because he refused to allow his work to be reprinted in anthologies used to teach literature at the college level.
Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke, an English writer best remembered for the novels Party Going, Living, and Loving. He published a total of nine novels between 1926 and 1952. He is considered as one of the group designated in the 1920s/30s as the 'Bright Young People' by the tabloid press.
Operation Shylock: A Confession is a 1993 novel by American novelist Philip Roth.
Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. His early novels such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature were distinguished by their minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. Out of a total of ten novels, three are erotica: Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.
Literary fiction, mainstream fiction, non-genre fiction, serious fiction, high literature, artistic literature, and sometimes just literature, are labels that, in the book trade, refer to market novels that do not fit neatly into an established genre ; or, otherwise, refer to novels that are character-driven rather than plot-driven, examine the human condition, use language in an experimental or poetic fashion, or are simply considered serious art.
True at First Light is a book by American novelist Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 East African safari with his fourth wife Mary, released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. The book received mostly negative or lukewarm reviews from the popular press and sparked a literary controversy regarding how, and whether, an author's work should be reworked and published after his death. Unlike critics in the popular press, Hemingway scholars generally consider True at First Light to be complex and a worthy addition to his canon of later fiction.
The Centaur is a novel by John Updike, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1963. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Portions of the novel first appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker.
Glory is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov between 1930 and 1932 and first published in Paris.
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume is Updike's second collection of short stories, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1962. It includes the stories "Wife-Wooing" and "A&P ", which have both been anthologized.
Trust Me: Short Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. Each story originally appeared in The New Yorker or other literary journals. The stories were collected in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Fermata is a 1994 erotic novel by Nicholson Baker. It is about a man named Arno Strine who can stop time, and uses this ability to embark on a series of sexual adventures. Like Baker's previous novel Vox, The Fermata was controversial amongst critics yet was also a bestseller.
Carol Sklenicka is an American biographer and literary scholar known for her authoritative, full-scale biographies of two important figures in late twentieth-century American literature: acclaimed short story masters Raymond Carver and Alice Adams.
Marry Me: A Romance is a 1976 novel by American writer John Updike.
Larry Dark has been the director of The Story Prize—a U.S. book award for short story collections—since its inception in 2004. He served as series editor of the O. Henry Awards for the 1997–2002 volumes. He has also compiled, edited, and introduced four other literary anthologies.
"What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?" is an informal opinion poll conducted in 2006 by the New York Times Book Review (NYTBR) to determine "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." Eligible works were those written by an American author and published during the quarter-century period from 1980 through 2005. The poll was conducted by NYTBR editor Sam Tanenhaus, who sent letters to literary figures requesting their participation and received 124 responses. The results were published on May 21, 2006, in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. An essay by A. O. Scott, titled "In Search of the Best", reflected on the results and the premise of the "Great American Novel".
