Authors

Gilbert Allen

Gilbert Allen is a poet, fiction writer, editor, and educator.

Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison is a writer from Greenville, SC. She is known for her book "Bastard Out of Carolina."

Marcus Amaker

Marcus Amaker is the poet laureate of Charleston, South Carolina.

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Harry Scott Ashmore

Harry Ashmore was an author, editor, and Pulitzer Prize winner for his editorials in 1957 on the school integration conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Havilah Babcock

Havilah Babcock was chair of the English Department at the University of South Carolina for many years and a passionate outdoorsman and famous outdoor writer.

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Augusta Baker

Augusta Baker was a librarian and storyteller known for her contributions to children's literature, especially regarding the portrayal of Black Americans in works for children.

Elise Blackwell

Elise Blackwell is a novelist and writer.

Cathy Smith Bowers

Cathy Smith Bowers is a poet and professor at the Queens University of Charlotte.

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Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Benjamin Griffith Brawley was an author and educator from Columbia, SC. Many of his books were considered standard college texts.

Gwen Bristow

Gwen Bristow was an author and journalist from Marion, SC.

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Matthew J. Bruccoli

Matthew J. Bruccoli was a professor at the University of South Carolina and the preeminent expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Franklin Burroughs

Franklin Burroughs is an essayist, environmentalist, and educator.

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Orville Vernon Burton

Dr. Orville Vernon Burton is a historian, educator, and author from Ninety-Six, SC.

Betsy Byars

Betsy Byars was an author of children’s books who lives in Seneca, South Carolina. She won a Newbery Medal for her novel, Summer of the Swans.

Emory Shaw Campbell

Born in Hilton Head Island, SC, Emory Shaw Campbell is an author and community leader among the Gullah people who live in the coastal Lowcountry region of South Carolina.

Wilbur Joseph Cash

Wilbur Joseph Case was a writer and journalist known for writing The Mind of the South.

Mary Boykin Chesnut

Born near Statesburg, SC, Mary Boykin Chesnut was married to an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and she kept a famous diary vividly describing events during the Civil War.

Alice Childress

Born in Charleston, SC Alice Childress was a novelist, playwright, and actress. She is known as the only African-American woman to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades.

Elizabeth Boatwright Coker

Wife of James Lide Coker III, Elizabeth Boatwright Coker was the author of nine historical romance novels based on southern and South Carolina cultural life.

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Tyrone Colbert is a comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is best known for hosting the satirical Comedy Central program The Colbert Report.

Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy was a popular novelist who has written many popular books such as The Prince of Tides.

Matthew Cordell

Matthew Cordell is a children's book author and illustrator from Greenville, SC.

Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport was a writer, translator, illustrator, painter, and teacher from Anderson, SC.

James Dickey

James Dickey was a professor at the University of South Carolina known for his poetry and novels.

Samuel Dickson wearing a dark and light suit.

Samuel Henry Dickson

Samuel Henry Dickson was a poet, physician, writer, and educator. He was one of the founders of the Medical College of South Carolina (now the Medical University of South Carolina).

photograph of Louise DuBose's gravemarker

Louise Jones DuBose

Louise Jones DuBose was the Assistant State Director of the South Carolina Writers' Project.

Nathalie Dupree

Nathalie Dupree is an author, chef, and cooking show host whose work has focused on Southern cuisine.

Pam Durban

Aiken native, Pam Durban is a novelist, short story writer, and educator.

Walter Edgar

Walter B. Edgar is a historian and author specializing in Southern history and culture, particularly for South Carolina.

Percival Everett

Percival Everett is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Mamie Garvin Fields

Mamie Garvin Fields was a teacher, civil rights and religious activist, and memoirist.

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Nikky Finney

Nikky Finney is a poet and writer from Sumter, South Carolina.

Starkey Flythe, Jr.

Starkey Flythe, Jr. was an award-winning writer whose short stories were widely anthologized in Best American Short Stories.

William Price Fox

William Price Fox was an author and television producer.

Dorothea Benton Frank

Best-selling author Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivan’s Island and has written several novels set in the Lowcountry.

William Gibson

Born in Conway, William Gibson is a speculative fiction writer credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk.

Black and white photograph of Frank Gilbreth, Jr.

Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. was a journalist and author. He is best known for co-authoring Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes.

Caroline Gilman

Carolina Gilman was a writer and founder of The Rose Bud, one of the first juvenile weekly magazines published in the United States.

Charlamagne tha God

Charlamagne tha God is an actor, author, and television personality. He is best known as the co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Breakfast Club.

Angelina Grimkè

Angelina Grimkè Weld was an abolitionist, political activist, women's rights advocate, and supporter of the Women's Suffrage Movement.

Sarah Grimkè wearing a frilly bonnet and checked dress.

Sarah Moore Grimkè

Sarah Moore Grimkè was a prominent abolitionist and is widely held to be the mother of the Women's Suffrage Movement.

Joyce Hansen

Joyce Hansen is a children's author. Her first children’s book, The Gift-Giver, published in 1980, was inspired by her own Bronx childhood and by her students.

Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes is a poet and educator from Columbia, SC. His collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010.

Paul Hamilton Hayne

Paul Hamilton Hayne was a 19th-century poet, critic, and editor from Charleston, South Carolina.

Edwin Dubose Heyward

Edwin Dubose Heyward was a Charleston author who wrote Porgy, the book on which the musical Porgy & Bess was based.

Jonathan Hickman

Jonathan Hickman is a comic book writer and artist. He is known for creating the Image Comic Series, The Nightly News, The Manhattan Projects, and East of West.

Jim Hoagland

Jim Hoagland is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and contributing editor of The Washington Post.

Josephine Humphreys

Josephine Humphreys is a novelist from Charleston, South Carolina. Several of her novels are set in Charleston.

Dot Jackson

Dot Jackson is an investigative reporter, columnist, editor, and novelist. She is best known for collecting Appalachian stories and folklore.

John Jakes

John Jakes is a writer best known for his Civil War trilogy, North and South.

Dinah Johnson

Dinah Johnson is a Children's book author and educator.

Varian Johnson

Varian Johnson is a writer and author of Twins and My Life as a Rhombus.

Robert Jordan

Robert Jordan was a fantasy author from Charleston, SC. His most famous work was The Wheel of Time series.

Charles Joyner

Charles Joyner is the author of Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Cultures and Burroughs Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University

Clara Louise Kellogg

Clara Louise Kellogg was an operatic soprano.

Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd is a writer best known for her novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings.

John Lane

John Lane is a poet, environmentalist, and educator.

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James Mathewes Legaré

James Mathewes Legaré was a poet, inventor, and artist from Charleston, SC.

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Bret Lott

Bret Lott is the bestselling author of fourteen books and professor of English at the College of Charleston

Susan Ludvigson

Susan Ludvigson is the author of eight previous volumes of poems and the recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Fulbright, NEA, and Witter Bynner Fellowships.

Grace Lumpkin

Grace Lumpkin was a writer who focused most of her works on the Depression-era and the rise and fall of favor surrounding communism in the United States.

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Elliott Crayton McCants

Elliott Crayton McCants was an author and educator. He is the author of In the Red Hills: A Story of the Carolina Country.

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Craig Melvin

Craig Melvin is a broadcast journalist and anchor at NBC News and MSNBC.

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Kelly Miller, Jr.

Born in Winnsboro, South Carolina, Dr. Kelly Miller, Jr. was the first African American to attend Johns Hopkins University.

Arthenia J. Bates Millican

Arthenia J. Bates Millican was a poet, short-story writer, essayist, and educator from Sumter, South Carolina.

Penina Moïse

Penina Moïse was a poet and the first Jewish American woman to contribute to the worship service, writing 190 hymns for Beth Elohim.

Mary Alice Monroe

Mary Alice Monroe is a best-selling author known for fiction that explores the compelling parallels between nature and human nature.

Steven Naifeh

Steven Naifeh is an artist and Pultizer Prize-winning biographer of Jackson Pollock and Vincent van Gogh.

Annie Greene Nelson

Annie Greene Nelson was a writer and playwright. She was the African American woman in South Carolina to publish a novel.

Peggy Parish

Peggy Parish was an author known best for her children's book series Amelia Bedelia.

Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Julia Peterkin

Julia Peterkin was a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who wrote about the African American experience in the South.

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Josephine Pinckney

Poet, novelist, civic leader. Pinckney played a key role in the literary revival that swept through the South after World War I

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Verni Robert Quillen

Verni Robert Quillen was a journalist and humorist from Fountain Inn, South Carolina.

Ron Rash

Ron Rash is a poet and novelist from Chester, SC.

Beatrice Witte Ravenel

Beatrice Witte Ravenel was a poet associated with the Charleston Renaissance in South Carolina.

Ennis Rees

Ennis Rees was a poet, children's author, and professor. He was named by Governor Riley as the third South Carolina Poet Laureate from 1984 to 1985.

Black and white photograph of Katharine Ripley holding a black dog

Katharine Ball Ripley

Between 1923 and 1953 the couple published ten books—including novels and memoirs—and dozens of short stories and nonfiction pieces.

Henry Martyn Robert

Henry Martyn Robert is the author of Robert’s Rules of Order, the most widely used manual of parliamentary procedure.

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Eugene Harold Robinson

Eugene Harold Robinson is a newspaper columnist and an associate editor of The Washington Post.

Louis D. Rubin’s distinguished career as a teacher, scholar, editor, and novelist has brought him numerous awards and honors, including honorary degrees from the University of Richmond, the College of Charleston, and Clemson University.

Archibald Rutledge

Archibald Rutledge was a famous naturalist writer who was also the first poet laureate of South Carolina.

Alexander Samuel Salley

Alexander Samuel Salley was a historian whose work and dedication to preserving South Carolina's history led to the creation of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

Dori Sanders

Dori Sanders is a peach farmer and author from York County, who wrote the best-selling book Clover.

Valerie Sayers

Beaufort native Valerie Sayers is the author of six novels.

William Gilmore Simms

William Gilmore Simms was a poet, novelist, and historian who wrote History of South Carolina (1842), which became a standard school textbook on the state’s history.

Painting of Kadra Maysi wearing white dress and red jacket

Katherine "Kadra Maysi" Simons

Poet, novelist, playwright, historian. Her primary love was poetry, with a focus on lyrical verse, sonnets, and nature poems.

George Singleton

George Singleton is an author and recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, the Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, the Hillsdale Award for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize.