36 Writers from Syracuse, New York

Steve Altes is an American writer and former aerospace engineer. He writes humorous essays about his misadventures.

Joe Amato is an American writer best known for his poetry and his work in poetics.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock was a noted American clergyman and writer of the 19th century. He authored the familiar hymn, This is My Father's World, among others.

Helen Barolini is an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often writes on issues of Italian-American identity. Among her notable works are Umbertina (1979), a novel which tells the story of four generations of women in one Italian-American family; and an anthology, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (1985), which called attention to an emerging, and previously unnoticed, class of writers.

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author best known for his children's books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. He wrote 14 novels in the Oz series, plus 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. He made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen; the 1939 adaptation of the first Oz book became a landmark of 20th-century cinema.

Harriet Emilie Cady was an American homeopathic physician and author of New Thought spiritual writings. Her 1896 book Lessons in Truth, A Course of Twelve Lessons in Practical Christianity is now considered one of the core texts on Unity Church teachings. It is the most widely read book in that movement. It has sold over 1.6 million copies since its first publication, and has been translated into eleven languages and braille.

Arthur Bridgman Clark (1866–1948) an American architect, printmaker, author, and professor, as well as the first mayor of Mayfield, California (1855–1925), and first head of Art and Architecture Department at Stanford University. He taught classes at Stanford University from 1893 until 1931.

Bruce Farrington Coville is an author of young adult fiction. Coville was first published in 1977 and has written over 100 books.

Kathryn Craft is an American author of literary fiction and contemporary women's fiction.

Mabel Potter Daggett was an American writer, journalist, editor and suffragist. Daggett reported from France during World War I, wrote a biography of Queen Marie of Romania, and was active in the woman's movement in the US.

Richard Dauenhauer was an American poet, linguist, and translator who married into, and subsequently became an expert on, the Tlingit nation of southeastern Alaska. He was married to the Tlingit poet and scholar Nora Marks Dauenhauer. With his wife and Lydia T. Black, he won an American Book Award for Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 And 1804

Daniel W. Drezner is an American professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, an author, a blogger, and a commentator. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was a women's suffragist, Native American rights activist, abolitionist, freethinker, and author. She is the eponym for the Matilda Effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention.

Robert Francis Goldthwait, better known as Bobcat Goldthwait, is an American comedian, director, actor, voice actor, and screenwriter, known for his acerbic black comedy, delivered through an energetic stage persona with an unusual gruff and high-pitched voice. He came to prominence with his stand-up specials An Evening with Bobcat Goldthwait—Share the Warmth and Bob Goldthwait—Is He Like That All the Time? and his acting roles, including Zed in the Police Academy franchise. Since 2012, he has been a regular panelist on the radio-quiz show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.

John Robert Greene is an American historian who is the Paul J. Schupf Professor, History and Humanities, the director of the History Program, co-director of the History/Social Science major, and the College Archivist, at Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, New York. Greene specializes in American history, with research and writing interests in the American presidency. He has edited or written nineteen books, including works on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. He has also written several volumes of the history of higher education.

Rev. Theodore Martin Hesburgh, CSC was a native of Syracuse, New York, who became an ordained priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and is best known for his service as the president of the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years (1952–1987). In addition to his career as an educator and author, Hesburgh was a public servant and social activist involved in numerous American civic and governmental initiatives, commissions, international humanitarian projects, and papal assignments. Hesburgh received numerous honors and awards for his service, most notably the United States's Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) and Congressional Gold Medal (2000). As of 2013, he also held the world's record for the individual with most honorary degrees with more than 150.

Mary Dana Hicks was an American art educator from the U.S. state of New York.

Zane Lamprey is a comedian, actor, editor, producer, and writer for television and movies. He grew up in Syracuse and attended SUNY Cortland in Cortland, New York where he majored in fine arts and minored in theatre.

Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen, born Jarm Logue, in slavery, was an African-American abolitionist and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and an author of a slave narrative.

Harold MacGrath was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

Terence Richard McAuliffe is an American politician and former entrepreneur who served as the 72nd Governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018. He was chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, was co-chair of President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and 1997 Presidential inauguration and was chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

Glen Morgan is an American television producer, writer and director. Most recognized for his work on The X-Files and the Final Destination franchise, Morgan has worked on many other projects including Amazon's Lore and New Line Cinema's Willard. In 2017, he was an executive producer on season eleven of The X-Files which premiered in 2018 on Fox. He also serves as an executive producer on The Twilight Zone reboot by Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions.

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Joe Okonkwo is an American writer, whose debut novel Jazz Moon won the Edmund White Award and was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, in 2017.

Hank O’Neal is an American music producer, author and photographer.

Steve Orlando is an American comic book writer, known for his work for DC Comics writing characters such as Batman, Martian Manhunter, and Wonder Woman, and two series starring Midnighter, which were nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.

Camille Anna Paglia is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.

Andrew Plotkin, also known as Zarf, is a central figure in the modern interactive fiction (IF) community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other utilities for the design, production, and running of IF games, Plotkin is widely recognised for both his creative and his technical contributions to the homebrew IF scene.

Maynard Hubbard "Dutch" Salmon II was an American outdoor writer, publisher, and founder of High-Lonesome Books, a publishing company in Silver City, New Mexico. He was a conservationist, environmental activist, fisherman, and homesteader based in New Mexico. Salmon was also a coursing sighthound breeder, trainer, and hunter.

Rodman Edward Serling, commonly known as Rod Serling, was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and war.

Terry Craig Shannon was an American information technology consultant, journalist and author. For over 30 years, he was involved in implementing PDP, VAX, and Alpha computers with their respective operating systems RSX, VAX/VMS, OpenVMS and Windows NT. He was a respected journalist and analyst, paying particular attention to Compaq and Hewlett-Packard after the merger of Digital Equipment Corporation and the high-performance computing (HPC) space, writing a series of newsletters.

Mary Elizabeth Sharpe was an American philanthropist, businesswoman, and self-taught architect who is known for her work on Brown University's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. She became a prominent member of the Garden Club of America, created an annual tree fund, and worked on many landscaping projects.

Craigan Paul Shirley is an American author, lecturer, historian and public affairs consultant. He has written four bestsellers on Ronald Reagan which include Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (2014), Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All (2005), and Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (2015), and Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980 (2017). He is also the author of Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative (2017), the only authorized biography of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's early career. Shirley is now at work on three new books on Reagan and his book, Mary Ball Washington, a biography about George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, was released December 2019.

Dana Spiotta is an American author. Her novel Stone Arabia (2011) was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her novel Eat the Document (2006) was a National Book Award finalist and won the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel Lightning Field (2001) was a New York Times Notable Book of the year. She was a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

Frank Nash Westcott was a reverend and writer. He was born in Syracuse, New York. He wrote two novels.

Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American short story writer, memoirist, novelist, and teacher of creative writing. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life (1989) and In Pharaoh's Army (1994). He has written four short story collections and two novels including The Barracks Thief (1984), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Wolff received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015.