Curated category
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 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…
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest on the 14th of October 1912, while on his way to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee.
- Henry JamesHenry James was born on the 15th of April 1843 at 21 Washington Place in Manhattan, into a family that would produce two other towering figures in American…
- 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.
- Langston HughesLangston Hughes died on the 22nd of May 1967, and beneath the floor of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, his ashes rest under an…
- Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp walked into a New York exhibition hall in 1917 and submitted a urinal for display. He had signed it with a pseudonym, "R.
- 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…
- Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson was three years old when he heard a man outside the Augusta parsonage announce in disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war…
- Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was born on the 30th of October 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey in the Idaho Territory.
- Eugene O'NeillEugene O'Neill died the same way he was born: in a hotel room. As he whispered his last words at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston on the 27th of November 1953…
- 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.
- W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died on the 29th of September 1973 in a Vienna hotel room, a few hours after reading his poems aloud at the Palais Pálffy.
- William JamesWilliam James was born at the Astor House in New York City on the 11th of January 1842, and by the time he died in Chocorua, New Hampshire on the 26th of…
- 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…
- Jonathan FranzenJonathan Franzen was born on the 17th of August, 1959, in Western Springs, Illinois, and by the time he was in his early forties, he had managed to get his…
- Joseph CampbellJoseph Campbell once told a packed lecture hall that if you follow your bliss, a track that has been there all the while will open up beneath your feet.
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May, 1923, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Russia.
- Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." He penned that line…
- Maxwell AndersonMaxwell Anderson died on the 28th of February 1959, two days after a stroke, and was cremated. Half his ashes were scattered by the sea near his home in…
- 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.
- W. E. B. Du BoisW. E. B. Du Bois died on the 27th of August 1963 in Accra, Ghana, at the age of 95. The very next day, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered in…
- C. Vann WoodwardC. Vann Woodward was born on the 13th of November 1908, in Vanndale, Arkansas, a small town that bore his own mother's family name and had served as a county…
- E. L. DoctorowEdgar Lawrence Doctorow was born on the 6th of January 1931 in the Bronx, named after Edgar Allan Poe by parents who ran a small music shop and dreamed in…
- Shelby FooteShelby Dade Foote Jr. was born on the 17th of November 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi. His father worked for Armour and Company, moving the family from…
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt once recalled the moment he realized the term "New Historicism" had taken on a life of its own. When he heard that American universities…
- Harold BloomHarold Bloom was, by the time he died in 2019, probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world. He grew up at 1410 Grand Concourse in…
- John Stewart BellJohn Stewart Bell was born in Belfast on the 28th of July 1928, into a working-class family where neither his parents nor any of his three older siblings had…
- Padraic ColumPadraic Colum entered the world on the 8th of December 1881 inside a County Longford workhouse. His father worked there as an employee while his mother Susan…
- Bruce CattonBruce Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, listening to old men describe what it felt like to march into battle. He was born on the 9th of October, 1899…
- Nicholas Murray ButlerNicholas Murray Butler ran Columbia University for 43 years, the longest presidency in that institution's history. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.