Contributed by: Mark Woodard
1
Rex Stout (1886) Nero Wolfe mysteries
Woody Allen (1935) Short stories: Without Feathers, Mere Anarchy, Getting Even, screenwriter: Sleeper, Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo
Jan Brett (1949) Gingerbread Baby, Trouble with Trolls, The Mitten
Candace Bushnell (1958) Sex and the City, One Fifth Avenue, Lipstick Jungle
Gail Z. Martin (1962) Chronicles of the Necromancer series
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Dan Jenkins (1929) Sports journalist, Semi-Tough, Stick a Fork in Me
Brian Lumley (1937) Necroscope series, Deadspeak
David Macaulay (1946) The Way things Work, Built to Last, Cathedral
Elizabeth Berg (1948) The Art of Pleasures, Home Safe, The Art of Mending
- Coraghessan Boyle (1948) When the Killing’s Done, The Terranauts
George Saunders (1958) Lincoln in the Bardo, Tenth of December
Ann Patchett (1963) Commonwealth, State of Wonder, Bel Canto
3
Joseph Conrad (1857) Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, Lord Jim
Alfred Uhry (1936) Playwright, Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night at Ballyhoo, Parade
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Rainer Maria Rilke (1875) Letters to a Young Poet, In Praise of Mortality
Jay-Z (1969) Songwriter, Empire State of Mind, 99 Problems
5
John A. Williams (1925) Clifford’s Blues, Captain Blackman
Joan Didion (1934) Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking
Calvin Trillin (1935) Journalist, humorist, About Alice, Killings
John Berendt (1939) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The City of Falling Angels
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Joyce Kilmer (1886) Poet, Trees, The Circus
Ira Gershwin (1896) Songwriter, I Got Rhythm, Someone to Watch Over Me
Doug Marlette (1949) Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist: Kudzu
Garth Stein (1964) The Art of Racing in the Rain, A Sudden Light
7
Willa Cather (1873) My Antonia, O Pioneers!, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Noam Chomsky (1928) Journalist, historian, Manufacturing Consent
Pearl Cleage (1948) What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day, Babylon Sisters
Mark Kurlansky (1948) Paper: Paging Through History, Salt: A World History
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Horace (65 BC) Ancient lyric poet, Epodes
James Thurber (1894) Humorist, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The 13 Clocks
Mary Gordon (1949) Final Payments, The Love of My Youth
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John Milton (1608) Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
Joel Chandler Harris (1848) Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit series’
Jean De Brunhoff (1889) Babar the Elephant series
Dalton Trumbo (1905) Johnny Got His Gun, screenwriter: Roman Holiday, Spartacus
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Emily Dickinson (1839) Poet, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, Hope Is the Thing With Feathers
Mary Norton (1903) The Borrowers series, Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Philip R. Craig (1933) Brady Coyne and J.W. Jackson series, Martha’s Vineyard mystery series
Jacquelyn Mitchard (1956) The Deep End of the Ocean, Two If By Sea
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Naguib Mahfouz (1911) Nobel Prize in Literature, Sugar Street, Palace Walk, The Children of Gebelawi
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918) Nobel Prize in Literature, The Gulag Archipelago, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward
Grace Paley (1922) Short stories and poetry, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, The Little Disturbances of Man
Jim Harrison (1937) Legends of the Fall, The Woman Lit By Fireflies, True North
Thomas McGuane (1939) 92 in the Shade, The Sporting Club, Crow Fair
Ayelet Waldman (1964) Bad Mother, A Really Good Day, Red Hook Road
12
Gustave Flaubert (1821) Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education
John Osborne (1929) Playwright, Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Luther
13
Marc Connelly (1890) Playwright, The Green Pastures, member of Algonquin Round Table
Kenneth Patchen (1911) Poet, The Walking-Away World, Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer
Ross MacDonald (1915) The Drowning Pool, The Blue Hammer, The Dark Tunnel
James Wright (1927) Poet, The Branch Will Not Break, Above the River
14
Shirley Jackson (1916) The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Lottery (short story)
Carolyn M. Rodgers (1940) Poet, Songs of a Black Bird, The Heart is Evergreen
Stanley Crouch (1945) Critic, journalist, author, Kansas City Lightning, Considering Genius
Douglas Brinkley (1960) Historian, Voices of Valor, The Great Deluge
15
Betty Smith (1896) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Joy in the Morning
Muriel Rukeyser (1913) Poet, Out of Silence, Life of Poetry
Edna O’Brien (1932) The Country Girls, The Little Red Chairs
Donald Goines (1936) Black Girl Lost, Dopefiend, Black Gangster
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Jane Austen (1775) Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey
Noel Coward (1899) Playwright, Private Lives, Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever, Present Laughter, Design for Living
V.S. Pritchett (1900) Poet, Marching Spain, London Perceived
Margaret Mead (1901) Cultural anthropologist, Coming of Age in Samoa, Growing Up in New Guinea, Sex and Temperament
Arthur C. Clarke (1917) 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood’s End, Time’s Odyssey series
Philip K. Dick (1928) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly
Scott Pratt (1959) Joe Dillard series, An Innocent Client, Injustice For All
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Ford Madox Ford (1873) Parade’s End, The Good Soldier
Es’kia Mphahlele (1919) Writer, artist, activist, Renewal Time, Down Second Avenue
Erskine Caldwell (1903) God’s Little Acre, Tobacco Road
John Kennedy Toole (1937) Pulitzer Prize winner,, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Neon Bible,
18
Saki (1870) The Unrest Cure, The Interlopers
Christopher Fry (1907) Playwright: The Lady’s Not For Burning, screenwriter: Ben-Hur
Alfred Bester (1913) The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination
Hal Kanter (1918) Screenwriter, Pocketful of Miracles, Blue Hawaii, Move Over, Darling
Michael Moorcock (1939) The Whispering Swarm, Gloriana
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Jean Genet (1910) Playwright, The Balcony, The Maids, novelist, Querelle, Our Lady of the Flowers
Eve Bunting (1928) Frog and Friends series, Night Tree, Hey Diddle Diddle
Brandon Sanderson (1975) Stormlight Archive series, Wheel of Time series
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Kate Atkinson (1951) Life After Life, A God in Ruins, Jackson Brodie mystery series
Sandra Cisneros (1954) The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, Loose Woman
Nalo Hopkinson (1960) Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads
21
Rebecca West (1892) The Return of the Soldier, The Fountain Overflows
Anthony Powell (1905) A Dance to the Music of Time series
22
Jean Racine (1639) French dramatist, Phedre, Iphigenie, Andromaque
Giacomo Puccini (1858) Composer, La Boheme, Tosca, Madame Butterfly
Edward Arlington Robinson (1869) Three-time Pulitzer Prize poet, The Town Down the River
Charles De Lint (1951) Moonheart, Eyes Like Leaves, The Painted Boy
23
Robert Bly (1926) Iron John: A Book About Men
Avi (1937) Poppy series, Cristen: End of Time adventure series
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Mary Higgins Clark (1927) Where Are the Children?, The Cradle Will Fall, Moonlight Becomes You, Death Wears a Beauty Mask, Under Suspicion series
Adam Haslett (1970) Imagine Me Gone, You Are Not a Stranger Here
Laura Moriarty (1970) The Chaperone, While I’m Falling
Stephanie Meyer (1973) Twilight Saga series, Breaking Dawn series
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William Demby (1922) Battlecreek, Love Story Black, The Catacombs
Rod Serling (1927) Television/film writer, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Planet of the Apes
Carlos Castaneda (1925) A Separate Reality, The Teachings of Don Juan
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Thomas Gray (1716) Poet, Elegy Written in a Country Church
Henry Miller (1891) Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn
Jean Toomer (1894) Harlem Renaissance poet, Cane, The Wayward and the Seeking
David Sedaris (1956) Humorist, Barrel Fever, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Elizabeth Kostova (1964) The Historian, The Swan Thieves
27
P.T. Deutermann (1941) Cam Richter series, The Last Man, The Commodore
Cokie Roberts (1943) Founding Mothers, We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters
Sarah Vowell (1969) Assassination Vacation, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
Greg Mortenson (1957) Three Cups of Tea, Stones Into Schools
28
Mortimer J. Adler (1902)
Manuel Puig (1932) Kiss of the Spider Woman, Heartbreak Tango
John Gray (1951) Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Why Mars and Venus Collide
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William Gaddis (1922) The Recognitions, A Frolic of His Own
Dave Pelzer (1960) A Child Called “It”, A Man Named Dave, The Lost Boy
30
Rudyard Kipling (1865) The Jungle Book, Captains Courageous, If, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Kim
Paul Bowles (1910) The Sheltering Sky, Let It Fall Down, The Spider’s House
Mercer Mayer (1943) Author, illustrator, Little Critter series
31
Frank Marshall Davis (1905) Journalist, poet, labor activist, Livin’ the Blues, Black Moods
Clarence Major (1936) Novelist, poet, My Amputations, Dirty Bird Blues