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Literature & Drama
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Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849Literature & DramaMaster of macabre fiction and poetry who invented the detective story and influenced horror worldwide.
Emily Dickinson 1830–1886Literature & DramaReclusive poet whose innovative use of form and slant rhyme made her one of America's greatest literary voices.
Walt Whitman 1819–1892Literature & DramaPoet whose Leaves of Grass celebrated democracy, nature, and the human body in free verse.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882Literature & DramaEssayist and philosopher who led the Transcendentalist movement and shaped American intellectual thought.
Robert Frost 1874–1963Literature & DramaFour-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose rural New England verse became synonymous with American poetry.
Maya Angelou 1928–2014Literature & DramaPoet and memoirist whose I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings broke new ground in autobiographical writing.
Langston Hughes 1901–1967Literature & DramaHarlem Renaissance poet and writer whose work celebrated Black life and challenged racial injustice.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882Literature & DramaThe most widely read American poet of the 19th century, and the most argued over since.
Allen Ginsberg 1926–1997Literature & DramaHowl, Kaddish, and the 1957 obscenity trial
Sylvia Plath 1932–1963Literature & DramaPoet and novelist whose confessional works, including The Bell Jar, broke new ground for women's writing.
Alice Walker b. 1944Literature & DramaThe first Black woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction, and the writer who recovered Zora Neale Hurston.
Gwendolyn Brooks 1917–2000Literature & DramaPoet whose precise portrayals of Black life made her the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.
John Updike 1932–2009Literature & DramaPulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose Rabbit series chronicled the anxieties of suburban American men.
Emma Lazarus 1849–1887Literature & DramaPoet whose sonnet The New Colossus gave the Statue of Liberty its meaning as a refuge for immigrants.