60 Writers from Richmond, Virginia

Allison Argo is an American award-winning film producer, director, writer, editor, and narrator. She is best known for her documentaries that focus on endangered wildlife and conservation. Her films have received awards including six National Emmys. and the duPont-Columbia Award for journalism.

David Baldacci is a bestselling American novelist.

Cecelia Carolina Bell is an American author and illustrator born in Richmond, Virginia. She attended College of William and Mary as an art major and went on to get a graduate degree in illustration and design at Kent State University. She became a freelance illustrator and designer for an array of projects before beginning her career as a full time author illustrator. Bell is married to children's author Tom Angleberger. She won the Newbery Medal Honor and Eisner Award for her book El Deafo.

Marguerite Bennett is an American comic book writer. She has worked on Bombshells, Angela, Josie and the Pussycats, and her creator-owned books InSeXts and Animosity. Her work has been recognised for her depiction of female relationships, and her representation of LGBTQ stories and characters earned nominations for a GLAAD Media Award in 2016 and 2017.

Lewis Harvie Blair was an American businessman, economics expert, and author.

James Branch Cabell was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles-lettres. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was "the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but against human welfare."

James Rives Childs was an American diplomat, a writer and an authority on Giacomo Casanova.

Seth Clabough is an American fiction writer and author of the novel All Things Await, which was nominated for the 2017 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction.

Slash Coleman is an American storyteller, producer, and writer who lives in Richmond, Virginia. The author of "The Bohemian Love Diaries," a personal perspectives blogger for Psychology Today, and a laughter yoga teacher, he is best known for his one-man performance-based storytelling shows which combine clever wordplay, music, and poetic observations about family, spirituality, romantic relationships, and struggles to find a sense of home common with Generation X artists. His work is often compared to that of author David Sedaris.

John Esten Cooke was an American novelist, writer and poet. He was the brother of poet Philip Pendleton Cooke. During the American Civil War, Cooke served as a staff officer for Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart in the Confederate States Army cavalry and after Stuart's death, for Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton. Stuart's wife, Flora, was a first cousin of Cooke.

Patricia Cornwell is an American crime writer. She is known for her best-selling novels featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, of which the first was inspired by a series of sensational murders in Richmond, Virginia, where most of the stories are set. The plots are notable for their emphasis on forensic science, which has influenced later TV treatments of police work. Cornwell has also initiated new research into the Jack the Ripper killings, incriminating the popular British artist Walter Sickert. Her books have sold more than 100 million copies.

Earnest Sevier Cox was an American Methodist preacher, political activist and white-supremacist. He is best known for his political campaigning in favor of stricter segregation between blacks and whites in the United States through tougher anti-miscegenation laws, and for his advocacy for "repatriation" of African Americans to Africa, and for his book White America. He is also noted for having mediated collaboration between white southern segregationists and African American separatist organizations such as UNIA and the Peace Movement of Ethiopia to advocate for repatriation legislation, and for having been a personal friend of black racial separatist Marcus Garvey.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born Rebecca Davis,, was an American physician and author. After studying at the New England Female Medical College, in 1864 she became the first African-American woman to become a doctor of medicine in the United States. Crumpler was the only female physician author in the nineteenth century. In 1883, she published A Book of Medical Discourses. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infertile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human beings. Dedicated to nurses and mothers, it focuses on maternal and pediatric medical care and was among the first publications written by an African American about medicine.

Dennis Danvers is an American author of science fiction novels. He lives in Richmond, Virginia. He is the president of the Byrd Park Civic League.

Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis was the only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, and the longtime second wife of President Jefferson Davis. She moved to the Presidential Mansion in Richmond, Virginia, in mid-1861, and lived there for the remainder of the American Civil War. Born and raised in the South and educated in Philadelphia, she had family on both sides of the conflict and unconventional views for a woman in her public role. She did not support the Confederacy's position on slavery and states' rights, and was ambivalent about the war.

Varina Anne "Winnie" Davis was an American author who was most known as the youngest daughter of President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America and Varina (Howell) Davis. Born in the last year of the war, by the late 1880s she became known as the "Daughter of the Confederacy". Images of her were widely circulated when she was young, helping morale. Later in the 1880s, she appeared with her father on behalf of Confederate veterans' groups. After his death, she and her mother moved in 1891 to New York City, where they both worked as writers. She published a biography and two novels, in addition to numerous articles. Davis died young from infectious disease.

Marion Fairfax was an American screenwriter, playwright, actress, and producer.

Ann Cottrell Free was an American journalist who wrote extensively on animal protection issues.

Douglas Southall Freeman was an American historian, biographer, newspaper editor, radio commentator, and author. He is best known for his multi-volume biographies of Robert E. Lee and George Washington, for both of which he was awarded Pulitzer Prizes.

George Vincent Gilligan Jr. is an American writer, producer, and director. He is known for his television work, specifically as creator, head writer, executive producer, and director of AMC's Breaking Bad and its spin-off Better Call Saul. He was a writer and producer for The X-Files and was the co-creator of its spin-off The Lone Gunmen.

Terryl Lynn Givens is a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he holds the James A. Bostwick Chair in English. He is a visiting fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU).

Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942. A lifelong Virginian who published 20 books including seven novels which sold well as well as gained critical acclaim, Glasgow portrayed the changing world of the contemporary South, differing from the idealistic escapism that characterized Southern literature after Reconstruction.

Jenny Han is an American author of young adult fiction and children's fiction. She is best known for writing The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy and the To All the Boys series, the latter of which was adapted into a film of the same name in 2018 starring Lana Condor and Noah Centineo.

Constance Cary Harrison, also referred as Mrs. Burton Harrison, was an American author of plays and novels. She and two of her cousins were known as the "Cary Invincibles"; the three sewed the first examples of the Confederate Battle Flag.

Molly Clark Haskell is an American feminist film critic and author. She contributed to The Village Voice—first as a theatre critic, then as a movie reviewer—and from there moved on to New York magazine and Vogue. Her most influential book is From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. She co-hosted Turner Classic Movies' The Essentials with Robert Osborne in 2006 for one season.

Dorothy Irene Height was an American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of African American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and African Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years.

Xeni Jardin is an American weblogger, digital media commentator, and tech culture journalist. She is known as co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing, as a former contributor to Wired magazine and Wired News, and as a former correspondent for the National Public Radio show Day to Day. She has also worked as a guest technology news commentator for television networks such as PBS NewsHour, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and ABC.

Plum Johnson is a Canadian writer and publisher, who won the RBC Taylor Prize in 2015 for her memoir They Left Us Everything.

Joseph Endom Jones was a Baptist minister and professor at the Richmond Theological Seminary and Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia from 1876-1922. He was a major leader in the Baptist Church among blacks in Virginia. His son, Eugene Kinckle Jones, was a leader in the National Urban League.

James Richard Kelly is an American film director and writer, who wrote and directed the cult classic Donnie Darko in 2001.

James Jackson Kilpatrick was an American newspaper journalist, columnist, author, writer and grammarian. During the 1950s and early 1960s he was editor of The Richmond News Leader in Richmond, Virginia and encouraged the Massive Resistance strategy to oppose the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. For three decades beginning in the mid-1960s, Kilpatrick wrote a nationally syndicated column "A Conservative View", and for years also sparred with liberals Nicholas von Hoffman and later Shana Alexander on the television news program 60 Minutes.

Dean King is an American author of narrative non-fiction on adventure, historical and maritime subjects. His books include Skeletons on the Zahara (2004) and Unbound (2010), both published by Little, Brown. He is the author of companion books to Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of novels and is the first biographer of O'Brian. In his biography, Patrick O'Brian: A Life (2000), which was excerpted in four full pages in the Daily Telegraph in London, King revealed that O'Brian was not really of Irish origin, as O'Brian claimed, and that he had changed his name by deed poll in London in 1945. King has also published articles in The New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, New York Magazine, Outside and other magazines and newspapers.

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda was named Poet Laureate of Virginia by the Governor, Tim Kaine, on June 26, 2006. She succeeded Rita Dove and served in this position from June 2006 – July 2008. While serving as Poet Laureate, Carolyn started the "Poetry Book Giveaway Project" and added the "Poets Spotlight" to her webpage highlighting one poet from the Commonwealth each month, in addition to traveling widely to promote poetry in every corner of Virginia.

Mary Greenhow Lee was an American diarist from Virginia. During the Civil War, Lee was a Confederate activist who kept a journal of events occurring in Winchester. According to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (VDHR), Lee's writings "survives as one of the most informative records of daily life in Civil War Virginia."

Shirley MacLaine is an American actress, author, activist, and former dancer. Known for her portrayals of quirky, headstrong, eccentric women, MacLaine is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Charles Maigne was an American screenwriter and film director of the silent era. He wrote for 32 films between 1916 and 1928. He also directed 18 films between 1918 and 1923. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and died in San Francisco, California.

George Donald Mancini is an American screenwriter and film director, most notable for the Child's Play franchise.

Rick McDaniel is an author. He is the founder and pastor of Richmond Community Church in Richmond, VA.. On October 14 Rick's new book 'You Got Style' was released. This is his seventh book but first in the self-help category. His previous book hit number one on Amazon in their Christian Faith category. McDaniel is known for his writing and public speaking. The High Impact Living ministry broadcasts featuring his messages in video and audio format are heard and viewed around the world.

Meg Medina is an American children’s book author of Cuban descent whose award-winning books celebrate Latino culture and the lives of young people. She is the recipient of the 2019 John D. Newbery Medal for her middle grade novel, Merci Suárez Changes Gears.

Beverley Bland Munford was an American lawyer, politician, social reformer, speaker, and author in Richmond, Virginia. He served six years in the Virginia House of Delegates and four years in the Virginia Senate. He wrote a book about the causes of the American Civil War.

Howard Owen is an American author born March 1, 1949, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He is a writer of literary fiction, mystery, and thrillers. He was the winner of the 2012 Hammett Prize awarded annually by the International Association of Crime Writers.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Edward Alfred Pollard was an American author, journalist, and Confederate sympathizer during the American Civil War who wrote several books on the causes and events of the war, notably The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866) and The Lost Cause Regained (1868), wherein Pollard originated the long-standing pseudo-historical ideology of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

Joshua Poteat is an American poet

Thomas Ritchie of Virginia was a leading American newspaper journalist, editor and publisher.

Princess Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy was an American author of novels, poetry, and plays. The Quick or the Dead? (1888), her first novel, which sold 300,000 copies, created more of a sensation than any of her later work. Her 1914 novel, World's End was reputed to be "the best seller in New York City". Described as a genius who was morbidly sensitive, she was a woman of moods and fancies, but in manner, as simple as a child.

David L. Robbins is an American author of several historical fiction novels, and a co-founder of the James River Writers. He founded the Richmond-based Podium Foundation.

Thomas Eugene Robbins is an American novelist. His best-selling novels are "seriocomedies". His novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was made into a movie in 1993 by Gus Van Sant and stars Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, and Keanu Reeves.

Powhatan Roberts Robinson was president of the New York Sporting Goods Company and an author.

Sydney Rosenfeld (1855–1931) was an American playwright who wrote numerous plays, and adapted many foreign plays. Close to fifty of his creations played on Broadway.

Kate Mason Rowland was an American author, historian, genealogist, biographer, editor and historic preservationist. Rowland is best known for her biography of her great-great-granduncle, George Mason, a Founding Father of the United States. Rowland was also a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She later went by the name of "Kate Mason."

Sara Schaefer is an American stand-up comedian and writer.

Michael S. Schmidt is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, author, and correspondent for The New York Times in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of The New York Times bestseller "Donald Trump v. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President." The book rose to No. 3 on The Times bestseller list and No. 2 on both Amazon and the Wall Street Journal's best seller list.

Lucie Johnson Scruggs was born into slavery and she became an educator and writer from the U.S. state of Virginia. She was married to a biographer of noted women and he included her in his book.

Martin Shapiro is an American screenwriter and comic book writer. He created the horror comic book series Chopper published by Asylum Press and wrote the screenplay for the movie version of it.

Laura Sims is an American novelist and poet. In 2017, Sims' debut novel Looker sparked a bidding war, which ultimately resulted in a major deal with Scribner. The book follows the spiraling descent of a woman obsessed—with the end of her marriage, with her inability to have a child, with her infuriatingly bourgeois Brooklyn neighborhood, and with her movie star neighbor. It was released on January 8, 2019.

John Reuben Thompson was an American poet, journalist, editor and publisher.

Ulysses "Jim" Walsh was an American record collector, columnist and radio broadcaster. He was the leading authority on early recording artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and their techniques, especially through his columns written between the 1920s and 1980s, most notably for Hobbies magazine.

James Harvie Wilkinson III is a United States Circuit Judge serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. His name has been raised at several junctures in the past as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court.

Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism, a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques.