List: American novelists

by likeorhate

•  Ayn Rand

  Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; February 2 1905 – March 6, 1982), was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936.

  

  37.8%
  

  40.0%
  

  22.2%
  
•  August Derleth

  August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror, Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction and biography.

  

  53.8%
  

  23.1%
  

  23.1%
  
•  Ben Bova

  Benjamin William Bova (born November 8, 1932) is an American science fiction author and editor.

  

  27.9%
  

  41.9%
  

  30.2%
  
•  Charles Baxter (author)

  Charles Baxter (born 13 May 1947 in Minneapolis) to John and Mary Barber (Eaton) Baxter. He is an American author known for blending a quiet, sometimes absurdist wit with a profound sympathy for his far-from-perfect characters; he has also attracted attention for the consummate brilliance of his prose. He is likewise celebrated as an engaging and even deeply moving performer of his own work in public readings.

  

  36.0%
  

  24.7%
  

  39.3%
  
•  Dalton Trumbo

  Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry.

  

  28.6%
  

  34.3%
  

  37.1%
  
•  Edward Bellamy

  Edward Bellamy (26 March 1850 – 22 May 1898) was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000.

  

  39.3%
  

  25.0%
  

  35.7%
  
•  Ernest Hemingway

  Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American writer and journalist. During his lifetime he had seven novels, six collections of short stories, and two works of non-fiction published, with a further three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction autobiographical works published after his death.

  

  37.1%
  

  22.9%
  

  40.0%
  
•  Elie Wiesel

  Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE (born September 30, 1928) is a writer, professor at Boston University, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, the best known of which is Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.. His diverse range of other writings offer powerful and poetic contributions to literature, theology, and his own articulation of Jewish spirituality today.

  

  42.3%
  

  28.2%
  

  29.5%
  
•  Frank Herbert

  Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels. The Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, deals with themes such as human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics and power.

  

  30.8%
  

  46.2%
  

  23.1%
  
•  Gene Hackman

  Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American actor and novelist. Hackman has made 80 films. He came to fame in 1967 when his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde earned him his first Oscar nomination.

  

  36.4%
  

  31.8%
  

  31.8%
  
•  Herman Melville

  Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet, whose work is often classified as part of the genre of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and novella Billy Budd, the latter of which was published posthumously.

  

  31.6%
  

  36.8%
  

  31.6%
  
•  Hal Clement

  Harry Clement Stubbs (May 30, 1922 – October 29, 2003) better known by the pen name Hal Clement, was an American science fiction writer and a leader of the hard science fiction subgenre.

  

  35.7%
  

  31.0%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Hunter S. Thompson

  Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, most famous for his roman à clef Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is also known for his use of psychedelics, alcohol, firearms, and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism.

  

  35.3%
  

  23.5%
  

  41.2%
  
•  Isaac Asimov

  Isaac Asimov, was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited about 500 books and over 9,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System . Isaac Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A.

  

  35.4%
  

  35.4%
  

  29.2%
  
•  Jerzy Kosinski

  Jerzy Kosiński (June 14, 1933 – May 3, 1991) was an award-winning Polish-American novelist, best known for the novels The Painted Bird (1965) and Being There (1971), the latter of which was adapted into a film in 1979.

  

  44.8%
  

  24.1%
  

  31.0%
  
•  John Updike

  John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series which chronicled the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to his death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit At Rest (1990) received the Pulitzer Prize.

  

  31.7%
  

  27.0%
  

  41.3%
  
•  John Steinbeck

  John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). He wrote a total of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

  

  26.1%
  

  41.3%
  

  32.6%
  
•  James Branch Cabell

  James Branch Cabell, pronounced /ˈkæbəl/ (April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when his works were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was "the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but against human welfare.

  

  41.2%
  

  35.3%
  

  23.5%
  
•  Jack Kerouac

  Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation, and a literary iconoclast. Kerouac is held as an important writer both for his spontaneous style and for his content which consistently dealt with such topics as jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. His writings have inspired several prominent writers, including Hunter S.

  

  31.3%
  

  31.3%
  

  37.5%
  
•  Jack L. Chalker

  Jack Laurence Chalker (December 17, 1944 – February 11, 2005) was an American science fiction author. Chalker was also a Baltimore City Schools history teacher in Maryland for a time. He also was a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

  

  26.7%
  

  33.3%
  

  40.0%
  
•  Jimmy Carter

  James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office. Before he became President, Carter served two terms as a Georgia State Senator and one as Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975, and was a peanut farmer and naval officer.

  

  31.4%
  

  25.5%
  

  43.1%
  
•  Joanna Russ

  Joanna Russ (born February 22, 1937) is an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism and is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire. It used the device of parallel worlds as a form of a mediation of the ways that different societies might produce very different versions of the same person, and how all might interact and respond to sexism.

  

  40.5%
  

  21.6%
  

  37.8%
  
•  John Irving

  John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. ; March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Some of Irving's novels, such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, have been bestsellers and many have been made into movies.

  

  45.5%
  

  18.2%
  

  36.4%
  
•  Jan Karon

  Jan Karon (b. 1937 in Lenoir, North Carolina) is an American writer and novelist, who has written for both children and adults. Janice Meredith Wilson was named after a popular novel, Janice Meredith. She retired from a career in advertising and moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina to write. Among her awards are an ABBY Honor award for books in the Mitford series (set in the fictional community of Mitford, North Carolina).

  

  43.2%
  

  22.7%
  

  34.1%
  
•  John W. Campbell

  John Wood Campbell, Jr. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an influential figure in American science fiction. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction, from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction. Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely.

  

  15.8%
  

  36.8%
  

  47.4%