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A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Alexander Posey

1873 - 1908

Alexander Lawrence Posey was a poet, humorist, journalist, and politician of the Muscogee Creek Nation. He founded the "Eufaula Indian Journal" in 1901, the first Indigenous daily newspaper. He was mostly known for his political satire in what became the "Fus Fixico Letters."

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

1875 - 1935

In her early years, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a teacher who went on to become politically active for both African-American and women’s rights. Alice was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. She wrote a ...  [+]

Ambrose Bierce

1842 - 1914

Ambrose Bierce was an American Civil War soldier, journalist, wit and writer whose literary reputation was mostly based on his various short stories about the Civil War and the supernatural. His works are often compared to Poe’s tales because they share an attraction to death in its strangest forms and express the horror of life in a meaningless universe.

Ann Plato

1824-?

Daughter of a farmer and a seamstress, there exists very little information about her, and most of her life is known from her only published work, "Essays; including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry." Although she was not a activist, she does emphasize the equality of people, regardless of race.

Anne Spencer

1882 - 1975

Harlem Renaissance poet and activist Anne Bethel Scales Bannister Spencer was born on a Virginia farm in 1882. The daughter of former slaves, Spencer’s mother enrolled her in school for the first time when she was 11, at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College (now Virginia University of Lynchburg). Six years later, Spencer graduated as valedictorian. Though she lived in Virginia her whole ...  [+]

Arna Bontemps

1902-1973

Noted figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Arna Bontemps was a prolific writer of poems, children books and novels. Despite his occasional popularity (notably for "Black Thunder," 1936), he struggled to make a living and started to believe that it was futile for him to attempt to address his own generation, and chose to focus on younger and more progressive audiences.

Bertrand N. O. Walker

1870 - 1927

Born in Kansas City and a member of the Oklahoma band of the Big Turtle Clan, Bertrand N. O. Walker was an author of poetry and folktales. Walker published two books under his Wyandotte name, Hen-Toh, including his collection of short stories "Tales of the Bark Lodges".

Bret Harte

1836 - 1902

The American poet and short story writer, Bret Harte, is best known for his short fictions featuring figures of the California Gold Rush such as miners, misfits, gamblers, … As a writter, he helped create the local-colour school in the American fiction. He was also praised by Andrew Carnegie in his book Round the World as "America […] most distinctively national poet."

Carl Sandburg

1878 - 1967

Carl Sandburg was an American poet, writer, and editor, who won three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime. Because of his diverse life experiences, he related to many different classes of American society and thus his works touched many. At his death, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared, “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.” ...  [+]