Curated category
National Book Award winners
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger arrived in New York City on the 5th of September, 1938, a 15-year-old Jewish refugee who had fled Germany with his family just weeks before.
- Margaret MitchellMargaret Mitchell wrote exactly one published novel in her lifetime, and it sold a million copies in its first six months.
- 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…
- 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…
- Allan NevinsAllan Nevins grew up on a farm in Camp Point, Illinois, the son of a stern Presbyterian farmer of Scottish descent and a German-heritage mother named Emma.
- George F. KennanGeorge Frost Kennan sent a telegram from Moscow on the 22nd of February, 1946, that would reshape American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth…
- 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…
- 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…
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford was born on the 19th of October 1895 in Flushing, Queens, and spent the next nine decades becoming one of the most wide-ranging thinkers…
- Charles RosenCharles Welles Rosen was born on the 5th of May, 1927, in New York City, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant architect and a semiprofessional actress who…