Curated category
American male short story writers
- Stephen KingStephen King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5 on the 19th of June 1999 when a minivan struck him and sent him into a depression in the…
- Mark TwainMark Twain was born on the 30th of November 1835, shortly after Halley's Comet swept past the Earth, and he came to believe the two of them were bound…
- F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott Fitzgerald sold fewer than 23,000 copies of The Great Gatsby in its first year, and the novel posted tepid sales for the rest of his life.
- Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was found semiconscious on the streets of Baltimore on the 3rd of October, 1849, wearing clothes that were not his own.
- Woody AllenWoody Allen has made 50 feature films. That single fact sits at the center of a career so long and so productive it resists easy summary.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a family where his mother kept his hair long and dressed him in frilly…
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville died on the morning of the 28th of September 1891, and the death notice in The New York Times misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."…
- Tennessee WilliamsTennessee Williams wrote in his will that he wanted to be sewn into a canvas sack and dropped into the sea at the exact spot where his idol, the poet Hart…
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient…
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner spent most of his writing life within a few square miles of Lafayette County, Mississippi, yet the fictional world he built from that patch…
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a local produce market to survive. During the Great Depression, he and his first wife lived on fish and crabs he…
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden by hiding in a meat locker three stories underground, surrounded by hanging cadavers.
- Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959, having spent much of the intervening years doing almost everything except what he…
- Vernor VingeVernor Steffen Vinge published his first short story, "Apartness", in the June 1965 issue of the British magazine New Worlds. He had just received his B.S.
- Saul BellowSaul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows on the 10th of June, 1915, in Lachine, Quebec, to parents who had fled Saint Petersburg two years earlier, carrying with…
- Tom HanksTom Hanks lost 35 pounds for a single role. He thinned his hair, learned to walk differently, and prepared to play a dying man on screen.
- Jack LondonJack London was born on the 12th of January, 1876, in a San Francisco neighborhood that would later burn to the ground in the earthquake of 1906.
- Salman RushdieSalman Rushdie was born on the 19th of June 1947 in Bombay, in British India, into a world on the verge of shattering and remaking itself.
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died on the 2nd of March 1982, in a Santa Ana hospital, having never seen the film that would make his name famous.
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller died on the evening of the 10th of February 2005 - the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman.
- Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne was born on the 4th of July, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, a town that had marked his family with a particular darkness long before he…
- Ralph EllisonRalph Waldo Ellison was born on the 1st of March 1913 in Oklahoma City, named after the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson by a father who hoped his son would grow up…
- Stephen CraneStephen Crane died on the 5th of June, 1900, in a health spa on the edge of Germany's Black Forest. He was 28 years old.
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine…
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May, 1923, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Russia.
- John JakesJohn William Jakes entered the world on the 31st of March 1932, in Chicago, Illinois. His early years unfolded within a city that would later shape his…
- George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Richard Martin was born on the 20th of September, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a longshoreman.
- Junot DíazJunot Díaz was born on the last day of 1968, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to Rafael and Virtudes Díaz. He was the third of seven children.
- L. Sprague de CampLyon Sprague de Camp was born on the 27th of November 1907 in New York City. He grew up as one of three sons to Lyon de Camp, a businessman dealing in real…
- Lin CarterLinwood Vrooman Carter stood in the infantry during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. He served as a soldier before he ever became a professional author.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books, and on top of that he sent an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He once said the only thing about…
- Dave WolvertonJohn David Wolverton arrived in Springfield, Oregon on the 28th of May 1957. His family moved to a farm in Monroe when he was six years old.
- Timothy ZahnTimothy Zahn was born in 1951, and for much of the late 1980s, Star Wars was a franchise running on fumes. The films had wrapped, the toys were fading from…
- Robert E. HowardRobert E. Howard died on the morning of the 11th of June 1936 at age thirty, having first asked a nurse whether his mother would ever wake from her coma.
- David BrinGlen David Brin was born on the 6th of October 1950 in Glendale, California. His parents were Selma and Herb Brin, who raised him as a Jewish child.
- Raymond BensonRaymond Benson was born in Midland, Texas, in 1955, a place known for its oil fields and wide-open skies, far removed from the smoky London clubs and exotic…
- A. MerrittA. Merritt earned $100,000 a year by the end of his life, but the work he is remembered for was never his day job. Abraham Grace Merritt, born on the 20th of…
- Fritz LeiberFritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was born on the 24th of December 1910, in Chicago, Illinois, into a household where Shakespeare was practically a family business.
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use…