This month we’re celebrating 250 years of American authors. I shifted through so many talented writers spanning multiple genres that I could dedicate an entire year’s worth of issues to American writers. Benjamin Franklin entertained colonists using the pen name Richard Saunders in Poor Richard’s Almanack. Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison authored The Federalist Papers which helped promote the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and English-born American Founding Father Thomas Paine gave us Common Sense and The American Crisis. These influential works inspired Americans to seek independence and boosted the morale of the continental army.
One of the best ways to celebrate our 250th anniversary is to explore our past through the eyes of our authors. Travel through history with the poets, short story writers, novelists, and playwrights who captured the American experience, our battles for independence, the fight to abolish slavery, westward expansion, the Industrial Revolution, world wars, the Beat generation, the civil rights movement, and the disillusionment of the Vietnam War era.
Can you match the book with its author? I’ve included the birth and applicable dates of each author. Each Title includes its publication date. Good luck!
Answers can be found in the last article of this issue, “Next Month in This Awful Awesome Life – August 2026. Keep reading your way through this issue, or you can use this link to jump to the answers,
https://www.thisawfulawesomelife.com/home/2026/7/3/next-month-in-this-awful-awesome-life-august-2026-by-fran-joyce
Titles:
Moby Dick (1851) Main Street (1920)
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Salvage the Bones (2011)
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) The Great Gatsby (1925)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) Sister Carrie (1900)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Walden (1854)
Little Women (1868) The Awakening (1899)
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Wise Blood (1952)
I Robot (1950) Native Son (1940)
The Naked and the Dead (1948) The Scarlett Letter (1850)
The Underground Railroad (2016) “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1860)
The Big Sleep (1939) Representative Men (1850)
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
A Game of Thrones (1996) O Pioneers! (1913)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
The Age of Innocence (1920) Our Town (1938)
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Catch – 22 (1961)
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1985) Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) Rabbit, Run (1960)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) The Bluest Eye (1970)
The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Naked Lunch (1959)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Invisible Man (1952)
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988) Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) There There (2018)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) Black Water (1992)
The Sound and the Fury (1929) The Color Purple (1982)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) In Cold Blood (1966)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) The Shining (1980)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) On the Road (1957)
Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) Leaves of Grass (1855)
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1968) The Night Watchman (2020)
Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) The Crucible (1953)
Blood Meridian (1985) All the King’s Men (1946)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)
American Authors:
Washington Irving (1783-1859) ____________________________________________
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) _________________________________________
Ralph Waldo Emmerson (1803-1882) ______________________________________
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) _________________________________
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) _________________________________________
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) _________________________________________________
Herman Melville (1819-1891) ________________________________________________
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) ____________________________________________
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) ___________________________________________
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) ________________________________________________
Henry James (1843-1916) _____________________________________________________
Mark Twain (1835-1910) _______________________________________________________
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) ____________________________________________________
Zane Grey (1872-1939) _________________________________________________________
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) _______________________________________________________
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) ___________________________________________________
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) ______________________________________________________
Willa Cather (1873-1947) ________________________________________________________
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) _______________________________________________________
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) ____________________________________________________
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) ___________________________________________________
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) _______________________________________________________
William Faulkner (1897-1962) ______________________________________________________
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) ____________________________________________________
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) ___________________________________________________________
Harper Lee (1926-2016) ____________________________________________________________
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) __________________________________________________________
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) __________________________________________________________
George R.R. Martin (1948-present) ___________________________________________________
Louise Erdrich (1954-present) _______________________________________________________
William Styron (1925-2006) __________________________________________________________
Joseph Heller (1923-1999) ___________________________________________________________
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) ____________________________________________________________
James Baldwin (1924- 1987) __________________________________________________________
Toni Morrison (1931-2019) ____________________________________________________________
Alice Walker (1944-present) __________________________________________________________
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) _______________________________________________________
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) _________________________________________________________
Richard Wright (1908-1960) __________________________________________________________
Carson McCullers (1917-1967) _______________________________________________________
William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) _____________________________________________________
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) ______________________________________________________
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) ______________________________________________________
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) __________________________________________________________
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) ____________________________________________________________
John Updike (1932-2009) _____________________________________________________________
Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) _________________________________________________________
Colson Whitehead (1969-present) ____________________________________________________
Tommy Orange (1982-present) ________________________________________________________
Sherman Alexi (1966-present) ________________________________________________________
Philip Roth (1933-2018) ______________________________________________________________
Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) _______________________________________________________
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) ____________________________________________________________
Arthur Miller (1915-2005) _____________________________________________________________
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ___________________________________________________________
Truman Capote (1924-1984) __________________________________________________________
Joan Didion (1934-2021) _____________________________________________________________
Dominick Dunne (1925-2009) ________________________________________________________
Ken Kesey (1935-2001) ______________________________________________________________
L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) __________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) ___________________________________________________________
Stephen King (1947-present) _________________________________________________________
Joyce Carol Oates (1938 -present) ____________________________________________________
Jesmyn Ward (1977- present) _________________________________________________________
Michael Chabon (1963-present) ______________________________________________________