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New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by
James Laughlin James Laughlin (October 30, 1914 – November 12, 1997) was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing. Early life He was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Laughlin ...
(1914–1997) and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City.


History

New Directions was born in 1936 of
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
's advice to the young James Laughlin, then a Harvard University sophomore, to "do something useful" after finishing his studies at Harvard. The first projects to come out of New Directions were anthologies of new writing, each titled ''New Directions in Poetry and Prose'' (until 1966's ''NDPP 19''). Early writers incorporated in these anthologies include
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...
,
Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernism, modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. In 1968 Nobel Prize in Li ...
,
Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
,
Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915December 10, 1968), religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, Christian mysticism, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. He was a monk in the Trapp ...
,
Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her p ...
,
James Agee James Rufus Agee ( ; November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for ''Time'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autob ...
, and
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and ...
. New Directions later broadened their focus to include writing of all genres, representing not only American writing, but also a considerable amount of literature in translation from modernist authors around the world. New Directions also published the early work of many writers including
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
and
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
, and
Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three ...
was published as a poet for the first time in a New Directions poetry collection. Laughlin also initiated a number of thematic series and publications. The New Directions "Poet of the Month" series consisted of thin volumes of either lengthy individual poems or small collections of poems by one author were released on a monthly basis to subscribers, and a larger "Poet of the Year" volume was issued once annually. The series were discontinued after a few years. "Directions" began in 1941 as a quarterly soft-bound journal, with each edition dedicated to a single author or work in prose. Early issues included a collection of short stories by
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
and a play by William Carlos Williams. The subscription model did not take hold, and later editions in the series were published in more traditional form and sold as individual works to the general public. Another short-lived New Directions periodical, ''Pharos'', was discontinued after its fourth number was published in the winter of 1947. Other notable undertakings include the New Classics and Modern Readers series, which reissued recent books that had gone out of print. These reprints included such works as ''
Exiles Exile or banishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons ...
'' and ''
Stephen Hero ''Stephen Hero'' is a posthumously published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce. It is the early version of '' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.'' Its published form reflects only a portion of the manuscript: the first 5 ...
'' by
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
and ''
The Great Gatsby ''The Great Gatsby'' () is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious mi ...
'' by
F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and exces ...
. After Laughlin's death, New Directions Publishing became owned by a trust established in his will.


Jacket design and colophon

After the time of World War II, New Directions developed a close relationship with the artist
Alvin Lustig Alvin Lustig (February 8, 1915 - December 5, 1955) was an American book designer, graphic designer and typeface designer. Lustig has been honored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame for his significa ...
, who designed modernist abstract book jackets. Lustig was ultimately responsible for developing a distinctive style of dust jacket that served as a New Directions hallmark for many years. The company's colophon is a figure of a centaur based upon a sculpture by Heinz Henghes, and usually appears on the spine of New Directions books.


Presidents

*
James Laughlin James Laughlin (October 30, 1914 – November 12, 1997) was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing. Early life He was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Laughlin ...
* Griselda Ohannessian * Peggy Fox * Barbara Epler


Awards

In 1977, New Directions was presented with a Carey Thomas Award special citation for distinguished publishing in experimental literature. New Directions' authors have won numerous national and international awards, including the:


Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

* Tomas Tranströmer, 2011 * Octavio Paz, 1990 * Camilo José Cela, 1989 * Elias Canetti, 1981 * Eugenio Montale, 1975 * Pablo Neruda, 1971 * Yasunari Kawabata, 1968 * Jean-Paul Sartre, 1964 * Saint-John Perse, 1960 * Boris Pasternak, 1958 * Andre Gide, 1947 * Hermann Hesse, 1946 * Frédéric Mistral, 1904


Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

* Hilton Als, 2017 * Gary Snyder, 1975 * George Oppen, 1969 * Richard Eberhart, 1966 * William Carlos Williams, 1963 * Tennessee Williams, 1948, 1955 * Robert Penn Warren, 1947, 1958, 1979


National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

* Yoko Tawada, 2018 * Nathaniel Mackey, 2006


MacArthur Foundation Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and ...

* John Keene, 2018 * Peter Cole, 2007 * Lydia Davis, 2003 * Anne Carson, 2000 * Guy Davenport, 1990 * Allen Grossman, 1989 * Walter Abish, 1987


PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living Americans, Green Card holders or permanent residents. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of ...

* Toby Olson, 1983


Prix Goncourt The Prix Goncourt ( , "The Goncourt Prize") is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward of only 10 euros, but resul ...

* Mathias Énard, 2015 * Eugène Guillevic, 1988 * Emile Ajar, 1975 * Romain Gary, 1956


Man Booker International Prize The International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize, as the Boo ...

* Laszlo Krasznahorkai / George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet, 2015


Independent Foreign Fiction Prize The ''Independent'' Foreign Fiction Prize (1990–2015) was a British literary award. It was inaugurated by British newspaper ''The Independent'' to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched i ...

* Jenny Erpenbeck / Susan Bernofsky, 2015


Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...

* Denise Levertov, 1976


Bollingen Prize in American Poetry

* Nathaniel Mackey, 2015 * Susan Howe, 2011 * Allen Grossman, 2009 * Robert Creeley, 1999 * Gary Snyder, 1997 * Robert Penn Warren, 1967 * Robert Fitzgerald, 1961 * Delmore Schwartz, 1960 * Ezra Pound, 1948


Robert Frost Medal

* Susan Howe, 2017 * Kamau Brathwaite, 2015 * Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2003 * Denise Levertov, 1999 * James Laughlin, 1999 * Robert Creeley, 1987


Windham-Campbell Literature Prize

* John Keene, 2018 * Hilton Als, 2016


Vilenica Kristal Prize

* Luljeta Lleshanaku, 2009


Current projects

The current focus of New Directions is threefold: discovering and introducing to the US contemporary international writers; publishing new and experimental American poetry and prose; and reissuing New Directions' classic titles in new editions. Drawing from the tradition of the early anthologies and series, New Directions launched the Pearl series, which presents short works by New Directions writers in slim, minimalist volumes designed by
Rodrigo Corral Rodrigo Corral is a graphic designer and conceptual artist based in New York City. In 2002, Corral founded Rodrigo Corral Design studio to create iconic book jacket art for the publishing industry. Corral has created designs and conceptual art fo ...
. Recent additions to the series include '' On Booze'' by
F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and exces ...
and '' The Leviathan'' by
Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian-Jewish journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga '' Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life ...
. /sup> New Directions also publishes a selection of academic reading guides to accompany a number of their books, including
Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
's ''Siddhartha'' and ''
The Night of the Iguana ''The Night of the Iguana'' is a stage play written by American author Tennessee Williams. It is based on his 1948 short story. In 1959, Williams staged it as a one-act play, and over the next two years he developed it into a full-length play, p ...
'' by Tennessee Williams. /sup>


Authors

New Directions was the first American publisher of such notables as
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
,
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...
, and
Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, so ...
. Today, their authors include: American literature *
Walter Abish Walter Abish (December 24, 1931 – May 28, 2022) was an Austrian-born American author of experimental novels and short stories. He was conferred the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship six years later. ...
* Will Alexander *
John Allman John Morgan Allman is an American neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, active in the fields of primates, cognition and evolutionary neuroscience. Life He graduated from University of Chicago with a Ph ...
*
Sherwood Anderson Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
* Wayne Andrews *
David Antin David Abraham Antin (February 1, 1932 – October 11, 2016) was an American poet, art critic, performance artist, and university professor. Education and early career Antin was born in New York City in 1932. After graduating from Brooklyn Techni ...
*
Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include '' The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), '' The Music of Chance'' (1990), ' ...
* Jimmy Santiago Baca *
Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes ( ; June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel '' Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist lite ...
* Lee Bartlett *
Kay Boyle Kay Boyle (February 19, 1902 – December 27, 1992) was an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and political activist. Boyle is best known for her fiction, which often explored the intersections of personal and political themes. Her ...
*
William Bronk William Bronk (February 17, 1918 – February 22, 1999) was an American poet. For his book, ''Life Supports'' (1981), he won the National Book Award for Poetry. He was also a veteran of World War II and a businessman. After teaching at Union Col ...
*
Frederick Busch Frederick Busch (August 1, 1941 – February 23, 2006) was an American writer who authored nearly thirty books, including volumes of short stories and novels. Early life and education Frederick Busch was born in Brooklyn, New York City on Augu ...
*
Hayden Carruth Hayden Carruth (August 3, 1921 – September 29, 2008) was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University. Life Hayden Carruth was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut. He grad ...
* Tom Clark *
Peter Cole Peter Cole (born 1957) is a MacArthur-winning poet and translator who lives in Jerusalem and New Haven. Cole was born in 1957 in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended Williams College and Hampshire College, and moved to Jerusalem in 1981. He has been ...
*
Cid Corman Cid (Sidney) Corman (June 29, 1924 – March 12, 2004) was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of '' Origin'', who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century. Life Corman was bo ...
*
Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet. Along with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, he was part of the Beat Generation, as well as one of its youngest members. Early life Born N ...
*
Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than 60 books. He is associated with the Black Mountain poets, although his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. Creeley was close with Charle ...
*
Guy Davenport Guy Mattison Davenport (November 23, 1927 – January 4, 2005) was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher. Life Guy Davenport was born in Anderson, South Carolina, in the foothills of Appalachia on Novem ...
*
Edward Dahlberg Edward Dahlberg (July 22, 1900 – February 27, 1977) was an American novelist, essayist, and autobiographer. Background Edward Dahlberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Elizabeth Dahlberg. Together, mother and son led a vagabond existence ...
*
Helen DeWitt Helen DeWitt (born 1957) is an American novelist. She is the author of the novels ''The Last Samurai'' (2000) and '' Lightning Rods'' (2011) and the short story collection ''Some Trick'' (2018) and, in collaboration with the Australian journalis ...
*
Debra Di Blasi Debra Di Blasi (born 1957) is an American author, screenwriter and former publisher. Biography Debra Di Blasi was born May 27, 1957, in Kirksville, Missouri. She grew up in northern Missouri. She was the art columnist for '' The Pitch'' magazi ...
*
H.D. Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D. throughout her life. Her career began in 1911 after she moved to London and co-founded th ...
* Coleman Dowell * Robert Duncan *
Richard Eberhart Richard Ghormley Eberhart (April 5, 1904 – June 9, 2005) was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total. "Richard Eberhart emerged out of the 1930s as a modern stylist with romantic ...
* William Everson *
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and ...
* Thalia Field *
F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and exces ...
*
Robert Fitzgerald Robert Stuart Fitzgerald (12 October 1910 – 16 January 1985) was an American poet, literary critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students".Mitgang, Herbert (Januar ...
*
Forrest Gander Forrest Gander (born January 21, 1956) is an American poet, translator, essayist, and novelist. The A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University, Gander won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2019 for ...
* John Gardner *
Allen Grossman Allen R. Grossman (January 7, 1932 – June 27, 2014) was a noted United States, American poetry, poet, critic and professor. Biography Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1932,Bruce Weber (June 29, 2014)Allen Grossman, A Poet's Poet, and Schol ...
* John Hawkes *
David Hinton David Hinton is an American poet and translator who specializes in Chinese literature and poetry. Life He studied Chinese at Cornell University, and in Taiwan. He lives in Calais, Vermont, East Calais, Vermont. Awards * 1997 Academy of American ...
*
Susan Howe Susan Howe (born June 10, 1937) is an American poet, scholar, essayist, and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among other poetry movements.
*
Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
*
Robinson Jeffers John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887 – January 20, 1962) was an American poet known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers' poetry was written in narrative and Epic poetry, epic form. However, he is also known f ...
*
Mary Karr Mary Karr (born January 16, 1955) is an American poet, essayist and memoirist from East Texas. She is widely noted for her 1995 bestselling memoir '' The Liars' Club''. Karr is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracu ...
*
Bob Kaufman Robert Garnell Kaufman (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986) was an American Beat poet and surrealist as well as a jazz performance artist and satirist. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the Black America ...
* Alvin Levin *
Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her p ...
*
Nathaniel Mackey Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teachi ...
*
Bernadette Mayer Bernadette Mayer (May 12, 1945 – November 22, 2022) was an American poet, writer, and visual artist associated with both the Language poets and the New York School (art), New York School. Early life and education Bernadette Mayer was born ...
*
Carole Maso Carole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives which are often called postmodern. She is a recipient of a 1993 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Biography Carole Maso ...
*
Michael McClure Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famo ...
*
Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915December 10, 1968), religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, Christian mysticism, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. He was a monk in the Trapp ...
*
Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels ''Black ...
*
Charles Olson Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist United States poetry, American poet who was a link between earlier Literary modernism, modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams an ...
*
Toby Olson Toby Olson (born 1937 Chicago) is an American novelist and winner of the 1983 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Life Through high school and his four years in the Navy as a surgical technician, he lived in California, Arizona, and Texas. He gradu ...
*
George Oppen George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions o ...
* Michael Palmer *
Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...
*
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
''The Pisan Cantos'', New York, New Directions, 194

- 200

/ref> *
Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Althoug ...
*
William Saroyan William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''The ...
*
Delmore Schwartz Delmore Schwartz (December 8, 1913 – July 11, 1966) was an American poet and short story writer. Early life Schwartz was born in 1913 in Brooklyn, New York, where he also grew up. His parents, Harry and Rose, both Romanian Jews, separated when ...
*
Frederic Tuten Frederic Tuten (born December 2, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He has written five novels – ''The Adventures of Mao on the Long March'' (1971), ''Tallien: A Brief Romance'' (1988), ''Tintin in the New World: A ...
*
Rosmarie Waldrop Rosmarie Waldrop (born Rosmarie Sebald; August 24, 1935) is an American poet, novelist, translator, essayist and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958 and has settled in Providence, Rhode Island since the late ...
*
Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern ...
*
Eliot Weinberger Eliot Weinberger (born 6 February 1949 in New York City) is an American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. He is primarily known for his essays and political articles, the former characterized by their wide-ranging subjects and experimental ...
*
Nathanael West Nathanael West (born Nathan Weinstein; October 17, 1903 – December 22, 1940) was an American writer and screenwriter. He is remembered for two darkly satirical novels: '' Miss Lonelyhearts'' (1933) and '' The Day of the Locust'' (1939), set ...
*
Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three ...
*
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
*
Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...
Central American, South American, and Caribbean literature *
César Aira César Aira (Argentine Spanish: ; born 23 February 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of contemporary Argentine literature. Aira has published over a hundred short books of st ...
(Argentina) *
Martín Adán Martín Adán (Lima, October 27, 1908 - January 29, 1985), pseudonym of Rafael de la Fuente Benavides, was a Peruvian poet whose body of work is notable for its hermeticism and metaphysics, metaphysical depth. From a very young age Adán demonstr ...
(Peru) *
Homero Aridjis Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poetry, poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalism, journalist, and former ambassador and ex-president of PEN International. Family and early life Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, ...
(Mexico) *
Roberto Bolaño Roberto is an Italian, Portuguese and Spanish variation of the male given name Robert. Notable people named Roberto include: * Roberto (footballer, born 1912) * Roberto (footballer, born 1977) * Roberto (footballer, born 1978) * Roberto (footb ...
(Chile) *
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...
(Argentina) *
Kamau Brathwaite Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB (; 11 May 1930 – 4 February 2020), was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon.Staff (2011)"Kamau Brathwaite." New York University, Department of Co ...
(Barbados) *
Coral Bracho Coral Bracho (born 1951 in Mexico City) is a Mexican poet, translator, and doctor of Literature. Bracho is winner of the Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize in 1981 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. She received the 2004 Xavier Villaurruti ...
(México) *
Ernesto Cardenal Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (20 January 1925 – 1 March 2020) was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived fo ...
(Nicaragua) *
Adolfo Bioy Casares Adolfo Bioy Casares (; 15 September 1914 – 8 March 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. He is the author of the Fa ...
(Argentina) *
Horacio Castellanos Moya Horacio Castellanos Moya (born 1957) is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. He was born in Honduras but grew up in El Salvador, and is considered one of the country's most important writers. Life and work Castellanos Moya was born in 1 ...
(El Salvador) *
Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine and naturalised French novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenc ...
(Argentina) * Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay) *
Vicente Huidobro Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (; January 10, 1893 – January 2, 1948) was a Chilean poet born to an aristocracy, aristocratic family. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the creator and greatest exponent of t ...
(Chile) *
Enrique Lihn Enrique Lihn Carrasco (3 September 1929 – 10 July 1988) was a Chileans, Chilean writer, Literary criticism, literary critic, and cartoonist, mostly known as a poet, but who also wrote Essay, essays, Short story, short stories, Novel, novels, Pla ...
(Chile) *
Clarice Lispector Clarice Lispector (, born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector (; ) December 10, 1920December 9, 1977) was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her distinctive and innovative works delve into diverse narrative forms, weaving them ...
(Brazil) *
Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...
(Chile) *
Nicanor Parra Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean physicist and poet. He has been considered one of the most influential Spanish-language Chilean poets of the 20th century. Parra described himself as an " an ...
(Chile) *
Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a ...
(Mexico) * René Philoctète (Haiti) *
Rodrigo Rey Rosa Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. Biography Rey Rosa was born in Guatemala City in 1958 into a middle-class family. He recalled that in his childhood he traveled extensively with his parents throughout Mexico and ...
(Guatemala) * Guillermo Rosales (Cuba) *
Evelio Rosero Evelio Rosero Diago (born 20 March 1958, in Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian writer and journalist, who won the 2006 Tusquets Prize. His works have been translated into a dozen European languages. Rosero currently lives in Bogotá. Educat ...
(Colombia) *
Luis Fernando Verissimo Luís Fernando Verissimo (Porto Alegre, September 26, 1936) is a Brazilian writer. Verissimo is the son of Brazilian writer Erico Verissimo and lived with his father in the United States during his childhood. Best known for his ''crônicas'' an ...
(Brazil) British, Irish, Canadian, and Australian literature *
Valentine Ackland Valentine Ackland (born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland; 20 May 1906 – 9 November 1969) was an English poet, and life partner of novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner. Their relationship was strained by Ackland’s infidelities and alcoholism, but s ...
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Jessica Au Jessica Au is an Australian editor and bookseller, and author of the novels ''Cargo'' and '' Cold Enough for Snow''. Au won the inaugural Novel Prize in 2022. She is based in Melbourne. Au won the 2023 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fictio ...
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H. E. Bates Herbert Ernest Bates (16 May 1905 – 29 January 1974) was a British writer known for his gritty, realistic short stories (he wrote more than 25 collections) and novels set predominantly in early- to mid-20th century England. His rural u ...
* Martin Bax * Carmel Bird *
Sir Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a d ...
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Edwin Brock Edwin Brock (19 October 1927 – 7 September 1997) was a British poet. Brock published ten volumes of poetry from 1959 through his death in 1997. Two of Brock's poems In particular -- ''Five Ways to Kill a Man'' (1972) and ''Song of t ...
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Christine Brooke-Rose Christine Brooke-Rose (16 January 1923 – 21 March 2012) was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her experimental novels.Basil Bunting Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985) was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of '' Briggflatts'' in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist traditi ...
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Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994; ; ) was a German-language writer, known as a Literary modernism, modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, to a Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Jewish fam ...
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Anne Carson Anne Patricia Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across ...
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Joyce Cary Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary (7 December 1888 – 29 March 1957), known as Joyce Cary, was an Anglo-Irish novelist and colonial official. His most notable novels include '' Mister Johnson'' and '' The Horse's Mouth''. Early life and education Art ...
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Douglas Cleverdon Thomas Douglas James Cleverdon (17 January 1903 – 1 October 1987) was an English radio producer and bookseller. In both fields he was associated with numerous leading cultural figures. Personal life He was educated at Bristol Grammar School an ...
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Maurice Collis Maurice Stewart Collis (10 January 1889 – 12 January 1973) was an administrator in Burma (Myanmar) when it was part of the British Empire, and afterwards a writer on Southeast Asia, China and other historical subjects. Life He was born in Du ...
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William Empson Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his firs ...
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Caradoc Evans David Caradoc Evans (31 December 1878 – 11 January 1945), was a Welsh story writer, novelist and playwright. Biography Evans was brought up in a Welsh language, Welsh-speaking community in Rhydlewis, Ceredigion, Cardiganshire, and although he ...
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Gavin Ewart Gavin Buchanan Ewart Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's ''New Verse'' at the age of seventeen. Early life Gavin Ewart was born in Lond ...
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Ronald Firbank Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) was an innovative English novelist. His eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with referen ...
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Henry Green Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke (29 October 1905 – 13 December 1973), an English writer best remembered for the novels ''Party Going'', ''Living (novel), Living,'' and ''Loving (novel), Loving''. He published a total of n ...
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Christopher Isherwood Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
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James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
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B. S. Johnson Bryan Stanley William Johnson (5 February 1933 – 13 November 1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programmes and made films. Early life Johnson was born into a working-class family, ...
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Hugh MacDiarmid Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978), best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid ( , ), was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish ...
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Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen Military Cross, MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of Trench warfare, trenches and Chemi ...
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Caradog Prichard Caradog Prichard (3 November 1904 – 25 February 1980) was a Welsh poet and novelist writing in Welsh. His daughter, Mari Prichard, was married to the late Humphrey Carpenter. Caradog Prichard was born and grew up in the Gwynedd slate-quarryin ...
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Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read wa ...
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Peter Dale Scott Peter Dale Scott (born 11 January 1929) is a Canadian poet, academic, and former diplomat. A son of the Canadian poet and constitutional lawyer F. R. Scott and painter Marian Dale Scott, he is best known for his critiques of deep politics and ...
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C. H. Sisson Charles Hubert Sisson, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (22 April 1914 – 5 September 2003), usually cited as C. H. Sisson, was an English poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. Life Charles Hubert Sisson was born on 22 April 1914 in B ...
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Stevie Smith Florence Margaret Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971), known as Stevie Smith, was an English poet and novelist. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A play, '' Stevie'' by Hugh Whitemore, bas ...
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Muriel Spark Dame Muriel Sarah Spark (; 1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006). was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. Life Muriel Camberg was born in the Bruntsfield area of Edinburgh, the daughter of Bernar ...
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Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...
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Charles Tomlinson Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE (8 January 1927 – 22 August 2015) was an English poet, translator, academic, and illustrator. He was born in Penkhull, and grew up in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. Life After attending Longton High S ...
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D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation ...
European literature *
Germano Almeida Germano Almeida (; born 31 July 1945) is a Cape Verdean author and lawyer. Biography Born on the Cape Verdean island Boa Vista, Almeida studied law at the University of Lisbon and currently practices in Mindelo. His novels have been translat ...
(Cape Verde) *
Corrado Alvaro Corrado Alvaro (15 April 1895 – 11 June 1956) was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. He often used the '' verismo'' style to describe the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria. His first suc ...
(Italy) *
Alfred Andersch Alfred Hellmuth Andersch (; 4 February 1914 – 21 February 1980) was a German writer, publisher, and radio editor. The son of a conservative East Prussian army officer, he was born in Munich, Germany, and died in Berzona, Ticino, Switzerland. ...
(Germany) *
Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
(France) *
Gennadiy Aygi Gennadiy Nikolayevich Aygi ( rus, Генна́дий Никола́евич Айги́, p=ɡʲɪˈnadʲɪj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ ɐjˈɡʲi, a=Gyennadiy Nikolayevich Aygi.ru.vorb.oga, ; 21 August 1934 – 21 February 2006) was a Russian ...
(Russia) *
Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly ; ; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine'', which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is ...
(France) *
Jacques Barzun Jacques Martin Barzun (; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-born American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, ...
(France) *
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics ...
(France) *
Gottfried Benn Gottfried Benn (2 May 1886 – 7 July 1956) was a German poet, essayist, and physician. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. He was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1951. Biography and work Family and beginnings G ...
(Germany) *
Nina Berberova Nina Nikolayevna Berberova (; 26 July 1901 – 26 September 1993) was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of anti-communist Russian refugees in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia. Her 1965 revision of ...
(Russia) *
Giuseppe Berto Giuseppe Berto (27 December 1914 – 1 November 1978) was an Italian writer and screenwriter. He is mostly known for his novels ''The Sky Is Red'' (''Il cielo è rosso'') and ''Incubus'' (''Il male oscuro''). He was a prisoner at Camp Her ...
(Italy) *
Johannes Bobrowski Johannes Bobrowski (originally ''Johannes Konrad Bernhard Bobrowski''; 9 April 1917 – 2 September 1965) was a German lyric poet, narrative writer, adaptor and essayist. Life Bobrowski was born on 9 April 1917Bobrowski, Johannes (1984). ''S ...
(Germany) *
Wolfgang Borchert Wolfgang Borchert (; 20 May 1921 – 20 November 1947) was a German author and playwright whose work was strongly influenced by his experience of dictatorship and his service in the ''Wehrmacht'' during the Second World War. His work is among t ...
(Germany) *
Johan Borgen Johan Collett Müller Borgen (28 April 1902 – 16 October 1979) was a Norwegian writer, journalist and critic. His best-known work is the novel ''Lillelord'' for which he was awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 1955. He wa ...
(Norway) *
Alain Bosquet Alain Bosquet, born Anatoliy Bisk () (28 March 1919 – 17 March 1998), was a French poet. Life In 1925, his family moved to Brussels and he studied at the Université libre de Bruxelles, then at the Sorbonne. He fought in the Belgian army in ...
(France) *
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...
(Russia) *
Louis-Ferdinand Céline Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( ; ), was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel '' Journey to the End of the Night'' (1932) won the ' ...
(France) *
Blaise Cendrars Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars (), was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European ...
(Switzerland) *
René Char René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance. Biography Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile ...
(France) *
Inger Christensen Inger Christensen (16 January 1935 – 2 January 2009) was a Danish poet, novelist, essayist and editor. She is considered the foremost Danish poetic experimentalist of her generation. Life and work Born in the town of Vejle, on the eastern ...
(Denmark) *
Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
(France) *
Alain Daniélou Alain Daniélou (; 4 October 1907 – 27 January 1994) was a French historian, Indologist, intellectual, musicologist, translator, writer and Western convert to and expert on the Shaivite branch of Hinduism. In 1991, he was awarded the Sange ...
(France) *
Tibor Déry Tibor Déry (18 October 1894 in Budapest – 18 August 1977 in Budapest) was a Hungarian writer and poet. He also wrote under the names Tibor Dániel and Pál Verdes. György Lukács praised Dery as being "the greatest depicter of human b ...
(Hungary) * Eugénio de Andrade (Portugal) *
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (; 18 October 1741 – 5 September 1803) was a French novelist, official, Freemason and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel '' Les Liaisons dangereuses'' (''Dangerous Liaisons ...
(France) *
Madame de La Fayette Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette (baptized 18 March 1634 – 25 May 1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer; she authored ''La Princesse de Clèves'', France's first historical novel and one ...
(France) * Eça de Queiroz (Portugal) *
Tibor Déry Tibor Déry (18 October 1894 in Budapest – 18 August 1977 in Budapest) was a Hungarian writer and poet. He also wrote under the names Tibor Dániel and Pál Verdes. György Lukács praised Dery as being "the greatest depicter of human b ...
(Hungary) *
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE (23 December 1896 – 23 July 1957), known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (), was a Sicilian writer, nobleman, and Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, '' ...
(Italy) *
Édouard Dujardin Édouard Dujardin (; 10 November 1861 – 31 October 1949) was a French writer, one of the early users of the stream of consciousness literary technique, exemplified by his 1888 novel '' Les Lauriers sont coupés.'' Biography Édouard Émile Lo ...
(France) *
Jenny Erpenbeck Jenny Erpenbeck (; born 12 March 1967) is a German writer and opera director. She won the 2015 ''Independent'' Foreign Fiction Prize for ''The End of Days'' and the 2024 International Booker Prize for ''Kairos''. Life Born in East Berlin, Erp ...
(Germany) *
Hans Faverey Hans Antonius Faverey (14 September 1933, in Paramaribo – 8 July 1990, in Amsterdam) was a Dutch poet of Surinamese descent. Besides being a poet, he was a lecturer at the psychology department of the Universiteit Leiden. Biography Faverey was ...
(Netherlands) *
Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , ; ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realis ...
(France) *
Romain Gary Romain Gary (; 2 December 1980), born Roman Kacew () and also known by the pen name Émile Ajar, was a French novelist, diplomat, film director, and World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice (once under a ps ...
(France) *
Wilhelm Genazino Wilhelm Genazino (22 January 1943 – 12 December 2018) was a German journalist and author. He worked first as a journalist for the satirical magazine ''pardon'' and for ''Lesezeichen''. From the early 1970s, he was a freelance writer who became ...
(Germany) *
William Gerhardie William Alexander Gerhardie OBE FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represen ...
(Russia) *
Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
(Germany) *
Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...
(Russia) * Martin Grzimek (Germany) * Henri Guigonnat (France) *
Eugène Guillevic Eugène Guillevic (Carnac, Morbihan, France, August 5, 1907 Carnac – March 19, 1997 Paris) () was a French poet. Professionally, he went by the single name ''Guillevic''. Life He was born in the rocky landscape and marine environment of B ...
(France) *
Lars Gustafsson Lars Erik Einar Gustafsson (17 May 1936 – 3 April 2016) was a Swedish poet, novelist, and scholar. Among his awards were the in 2006, the Goethe Medal in 2009, the Thomas Mann Prize in 2015, and the Nonino#Winners, International Nonino Prize i ...
(Sweden) *
Knut Hamsun Knut Hamsun (4 August 1859 – 19 February 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to conscio ...
(Norway) *
Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
(Germany) *
Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry (; ; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French Artistic symbol, symbolist writer who is best known for his play ''Ubu Roi'' (1896)'','' often cited as a forerunner of the Dada, Surrealism, Surrealist, and Futurism, Futurist ...
(France) *
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
(Germany/Czech Republic) *
Heinrich von Kleist Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (; 18 October 177721 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays ''The Prince of Homburg'', '' Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'' ...
(Germany) *
Alexander Kluge Alexander Kluge (born 14 February 1932) is a German author, philosopher, academic and film director.(editor) Early life, education and early career Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony (now Saxony-Anhalt), Germany. After growing ...
(Germany) *
László Krasznahorkai László Krasznahorkai (; born 5 January 1954) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter known for difficult and demanding novels, often labeled postmodern, with dystopian and melancholic themes. Several of his works, including his novels '' Sat ...
(Hungary) *
Dezső Kosztolányi Dezső Kosztolányi (; March 29, 1885 – November 3, 1936) was a Hungarian writer, journalist, translator, and also a speaker of Esperanto. He wrote in all literary genres, from poetry to essays to theatre plays. Building his own style, he used ...
(Hungary) *
Miroslav Krleža Miroslav Krleža (; 7 July 1893 – 29 December 1981) was a Croatian writer who is widely considered to be the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century. He wrote notable works in all the literary genres, including poetry ('' The Ballads o ...
(Yugoslavia) *
Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz (; 17 March 19267 October 2014) was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, as well as dramas for radio and the theatre. In 2000 he received the Goethe Prize on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's b ...
(Germany) * Luljeta Lleshanaku (Albania) *
Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...
(Spain) *
Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French Symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools o ...
(France) *
Javier Marías Javier Marías Franco (20 September 1951 – 11 September 2022) was a Spanish author, translator, and columnist. Marías published fifteen novels, including '' A Heart So White'' (''Corazón tan blanco,'' 1992'')'', '' Tomorrow in the Battle Th ...
(Spain) *
Henri Michaux Henri Michaux (; 24 May 1899 – 19 October 1984) was a Belgian-born French poet, writer and painter. Michaux is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art: the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenhei ...
(France) *
Frédéric Mistral Joseph Étienne Frédéric Mistral (; , 8 September 1830 – 25 March 1914) was an Occitan writer and lexicographer of the Provençal form of the language. He received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of the fresh origina ...
(France) *
Eugenio Montale Eugenio Montale (; 12 October 1896 – 12 September 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator. In 1975, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 'for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has ...
(Italy) *
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
(Russia) *
Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...
(Russia) *
Victor Pelevin Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲeɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects' ...
(Russia) *
Saint-John Perse Alexis Leger (; 31 May 1887 – 20 September 1975), better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse (; also Saint-Leger Leger), was a French poet, writer and diplomat, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the ev ...
(France) *
Raymond Queneau Raymond Auguste Queneau (; ; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo (), notable for his wit and cynical humour. Biography Queneau, the only child of Auguste Que ...
(France) *
Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as ...
(Germany) *
Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he s ...
(France) *
Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian-Jewish journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga '' Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life ...
(Austria) *
W. G. Sebald Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was according to ''The New Yorker'' ”widely recog ...
(Germany) *
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...
(French) *
Dag Solstad Dag Solstad (16 July 1941 – 14 March 2025) was a Norwegian novelist, short-story writer and dramatist whose work has been translated into 20 languages. Solstad wrote nearly 30 books and was the only author to have received the Norwegian L ...
(Norway) *
Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, , ), was a French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' ('' The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de Parme'' ('' T ...
(France) *
Antonio Tabucchi Antonio Tabucchi (; 24 September 1943 – 25 March 2012) was an Italian writer and academic who taught Portuguese language and literature at the University of Siena, Italy. Deeply in love with Portugal, he was an expert, critic and translator o ...
(Italy) * Yoko Tawada (Japan/Germany) *
Uwe Timm Uwe Timm (; born 30 March 1940 in Hamburg) is a German writer. Life and work Uwe Timm was born in 1940 in Bad Kreuznach, and was the youngest son in his family. His brother, 16 years his senior, was a soldier in the and died in Ukraine in 1943 ...
(Germany) * Leonid Tsypkin (Russia) *
Tomas Tranströmer Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (; 15 April 1931 – 26 March 2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long winters in Sweden, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer' ...
(Sweden) *
Dubravka Ugrešić Dubravka Ugrešić (; 27 March 1949 – 17 March 2023) was a Yugoslav- Croatian and Dutch writer. A graduate of University of Zagreb, she was based in Amsterdam from 1996 and continued to identify as a Yugoslav writer. Early life and education ...
(Yugoslavia) *
Paul Valéry Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, m ...
(France) *
Enrique Vila-Matas Enrique Vila-Matas (born 31 March 1948 in Barcelona) is a Spanish writer. He has written several award-winning books that mix genres and has been branded as one of the most original and prominent writers in the Spanish language. He is a found ...
(Spain) *
Elio Vittorini Elio Vittorini (; 23 July 1908 – 12 February 1966) was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work, in English speaking countries ...
(Italy) *
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Bestsellers

* ''
Labyrinths In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth () is an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the h ...
'', Jorge Luis Borges * '' A Coney Island of the Mind'', Lawrence Ferlinghetti * '' Siddhartha'', Hermann Hesse * ''
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry ''Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry'' (1973) is the penultimate novel by the late British avant-garde novelist B. S. Johnson. It is the metafictional account of a disaffected young man, Christie Malry, who applies the principles of double-entry ...
'', B. S. Johnson * '' Selected Poems'', Denise Levertov * ''
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare ''The Air-Conditioned Nightmare'' is a memoir written by Henry Miller, first published in 1945, about his year-long road trip across the United States in 1940, following his return from nearly a decade living in Paris. Background Miller was born ...
'', Henry Miller * ''
Nausea Nausea is a diffuse sensation of unease and discomfort, sometimes perceived as an urge to vomit. It can be a debilitating symptom if prolonged and has been described as placing discomfort on the chest, abdomen, or back of the throat. Over 30 d ...
'', Jean-Paul Sartre * ''
Turtle Island Turtle Island is a name for Earth or North America, used by some Indigenous peoples of the Americas, American Indigenous peoples, as well as by some Indigenous rights, Indigenous rights activists. The name is based on a creation myth common to se ...
'', Gary Snyder * ''
Miss Lonelyhearts ''Miss Lonelyhearts'' is a novella by Nathanael West. He began writing it early in 1930 and completed the manuscript in November 1932. Published in 1933, it is an Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and ...
'' & ''
The Day of the Locust ''The Day of the Locust'' is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene ...
'', Nathanael West * ''
The Glass Menagerie ''The Glass Menagerie'' is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his histrionic mo ...
'', Tennessee Williams * '' Selected Poems'', William Carlos Williams * ''
The Cantos ''The Cantos'' is a long modernist poem by Ezra Pound, written in 109 canonical sections in addition to a number of drafts and fragments added as a supplement at the request of the poem's American publisher, James Laughlin. Most of it was wr ...
'', Ezra Pound


References


Further reading

* Laughlin, James. ''The Way It Wasn't.'' Ed. Barbara Epler and Daniel Javitch. New York: New Directions, 2006. *


External links


New Directions Publishing WebsiteWill Hall Books-- Checklist of early authors and books published by New Directions PressAlvin Lustig
*''
The New Inquiry ''The New Inquiry'' is an online magazine of cultural and literary criticism, established by Mary Borkowski, Jennifer Bernstein and Rachel Rosenfelt in 2009 and administered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation. The magazine's website updates da ...
'' ttp://thenewinquiry.com/post/1534825327/judging-books-by-their-covers on The New Directions Pearl series{{Authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Companies based in New York City Publishing companies established in 1936 1936 establishments in New York (state)