Curated playlist
Novelists from New York (state)
- Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe's executor used forged letters to paint him as a drunken madman.
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas insisted on giving blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an on-screen credit for Spartacus.
- Langston HughesLangston Hughes's ashes rest beneath the floor of a Harlem research center.
- Saul BellowSaul Bellow learned he had entered the U.S. illegally as a child when he tried to enlist. He became a citizen in 1941.
- Truman CapoteOn the 23rd of August 1984, Truman Capote boarded a flight from New York to Los Angeles with a granny-square baby blanket. A relative he called Sook had made it for him when he was small. Friends said he was seldom without it, even when he…
- Thomas PynchonThomas Pynchon told his agent in April 1964 that he had four novels in progress at once. If they came out on paper anything like they looked inside his head, he wrote, the result would be "the literary event of the millennium." The writer…
- David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace wrote a novel that Time magazine placed among the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. That book was Infinite Jest, and it reached readers in 1996. Years later, the critic David Ulin wrote…
- Gene HackmanGene Hackman, born Eugene Allen Hackman, once received the lowest score the Pasadena Playhouse had ever given a student. His classmates already treated him and his friend Dustin Hoffman as outsiders. They voted the two of them the least…
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan once asked a librarian for a book on stars and got one about movie stars.
- James BaldwinThe FBI file on James Baldwin ran to 1,884 pages, gathered from 1960 until the early 1970s. In that era of surveillance of American writers, agents filled 276 pages on Richard Wright and 110 on Truman Capote. Henry Miller rated just nine.…
- Ayn RandWhen Ayn Rand died in New York City on the 6th of March 1982, her funeral included a six-foot floral arrangement shaped like a dollar sign. The tribute suited a woman who had turned self-interest into a moral code. She was born Alisa…
- 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.
- Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair aimed his novel The Jungle at the public's heart and hit its stomach instead. Meat sales fell by half.
- L. Sprague de CampL. Sprague de Camp turned the word extraterrestrial into a noun. He also coined E.T. in a 1939 magazine article.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
- Fletcher PrattFletcher Pratt was arrested at eighteen for robbing cash drawers. He became a noted military historian.
- Audre LordeAudre Lorde answered questions about her feelings by reciting a poem. She was a nearly blind child in Harlem.
- James Wyatt (game designer)James Wyatt wrote Dungeons and Dragons adventures while working as a Methodist minister.
- Donald A. WollheimDonald A. Wollheim, the American science fiction editor, publisher, writer and fan, picked up a telephone in 1964 and called Professor J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Wollheim's daughter Betsy, Tolkien answered that he would never allow his…
- Alan Dean FosterThe 1976 Star Wars novel carried only George Lucas's name, but Alan Dean Foster wrote it. He was hired as a ghostwriter.
- George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…