Curated playlist
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
- Woody AllenWoody Allen failed a film production course at New York University, then went on to direct Annie Hall.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- Tennessee WilliamsTennessee Williams wanted to be sewn into a canvas sack and dropped into the sea.
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner never told his daughter he had won the Nobel Prize. She heard it when the principal called her in.
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
- Langston HughesLangston Hughes's ashes rest beneath the floor of a Harlem research center.
- Eugene O'NeillPlaywright Eugene O'Neill was born in a hotel room and died in one. His last words were about that coincidence.
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
- W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died hours after reading his poems aloud in a Vienna hotel.
- Carrie FisherCarrie Fisher once asked to be reported as drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
- Vladimir NabokovNovelist Vladimir Nabokov also named butterfly species, and later genetic research backed his theory.
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller's novel Catch-22 was first called Catch-18. It was renamed to avoid confusion with Mila 18.
- Maxwell AndersonMaxwell Anderson was fired from Whittier College for backing a jailed student.
- Dennis Kennedy (author)Dennis Kennedy went from a Navy communications post to the Samuel Beckett chair of drama.
- Fritz LeiberFritz Leiber is credited with coining the term "sword and sorcery".