List: Jewish American writers

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%
  
•  Albert Einstein

  Albert Einstein (14 March 1879–18 April 1955) was a German-born Swiss-American theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. He is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

  

  45.3%
  

  20.0%
  

  34.7%
  
•  Allen Ginsberg

  Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem "Howl" (1956), in which he celebrates fellow members of the Beat Generation and critiques what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States.

  

  29.6%
  

  29.6%
  

  40.8%
  
•  Arthur Miller

  Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include awards-winning plays such as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.

  

  61.1%
  

  22.2%
  

  16.7%
  
•  Arthur Laurents

  Arthur Laurents (born July 14, 1918) is an award-winning American playwright, librettist, stage director, and screenwriter. His credits include the stage musicals West Side Story and ' and the film The Way We Were.

  

  41.2%
  

  32.4%
  

  26.5%
  
•  Al Capp

  Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats and Long Sam. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award (posthumously) for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning."

  

  30.3%
  

  39.4%
  

  30.3%
  
•  Albert Brooks

  Albert Brooks (born July 22, 1947) is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News. His voice acting credits include as Marlin, the clownfish father in Finding Nemo and as a recurring guest voice actor for the animated television series The Simpsons.

  

  27.2%
  

  28.3%
  

  44.5%
  
•  Billy Crystal

  William Edward "Billy" Crystal (born March 14, 1948) is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian and film director. He gained prominence in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap and became a Hollywood film star during the late 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the critical and box office successes When Harry Met Sally... and City Slickers. Additionally, he has hosted the Academy Awards eight times.

  

  29.8%
  

  37.2%
  

  33.0%
  
•  Christopher Guest

  Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest (born February 5, 1948), better known as Christopher Guest, is a British-American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor and comedian. He is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed and starred in several "mockumentary" films that feature a repertory-like ensemble cast.

  

  36.4%
  

  27.3%
  

  36.4%
  
•  David Mamet

  David Alan Mamet (born November 30, 1947) is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for their exploration of masculinity. Mamet received Tony Award nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988), as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross.

  

  35.6%
  

  35.6%
  

  28.9%
  
•  Dorothy Parker

  Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American writer and poet, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of that circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting.

  

  26.3%
  

  19.2%
  

  54.5%
  
•  Eric Hoffer

  Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work.

  

  34.3%
  

  17.1%
  

  48.6%
  
•  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%
  
•  George S. Kaufman

  George Simon Kaufman (16 November 1889 - 2 June 1961) was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic.

  

  38.5%
  

  30.8%
  

  30.8%
  
•  Charles Goren

  Charles Henry Goren (March 4, 1901 – April 3, 1991) was a world champion American bridge player and bestselling author who contributed significantly to the development and popularization of the game.

  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Harlan Ellison

  Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction. His published works include over 1,000 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering not only literature, but film, television, and print media. His reputation as an editor and anthologist was cemented with his two ground-breaking science fiction anthologies, Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions.

  

  26.8%
  

  30.4%
  

  42.9%
  
•  Hugo Gernsback

  Hugo Gernsback (August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967), born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourg American inventor, writer and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes popularly called "The Father of Science Fiction"; in his honor, the annual Science Fiction Achievement awards are named the "Hugos.

  

  20.0%
  

  18.8%
  

  61.3%
  
•  Harold Kushner

  Harold S. Kushner is a prominent American rabbi aligned with the progressive wing of Conservative Judaism.

  

  29.6%
  

  33.3%
  

  37.0%
  
•  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%
  
•  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (November 21, 1902 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978.

  

  30.8%
  

  30.8%
  

  38.5%
  
•  Coen brothers

  Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957), known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. For more than twenty years, the pair have written and directed numerous successful films, ranging from screwball comedies to hardboiled thrillers, to movies where genres blur together. The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing.

  

  36.3%
  

  31.3%
  

  32.5%
  
•  Judy Blume

  Judy Blume (born Judy Sussman; February 12, 1938) is an American author. She has written many novels for children and young adults which have exceeded sales of 80 million and been translated into 31 languages.

  

  33.3%
  

  35.1%
  

  31.6%
  
•  Jack Kirby

  Jacob Kurtzberg (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), better known by the pen name Jack Kirby, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor. Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comic strips under different pseudonyms, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1941, Kirby and writer Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics.

  

  37.9%
  

  34.5%
  

  27.6%
  
•  Kinky Friedman

  Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman (born November 1, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular Will Rogers and Mark Twain. He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.

  

  36.7%
  

  18.4%
  

  44.9%
  
•  Kathy Acker

  Kathy Acker (née Karen Lehmann) (18 April 1947 – 30 November 1997) was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S. Burroughs, David Antin, French critical theory, philosophy, and pornography.

  

  36.4%
  

  36.4%
  

  27.3%