- Ambrose Bierce - Biography
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) by Karen Bernardo: Few writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have managed to remain as enigmatic as Ambrose Bierce...
- Ann Beattie - Biography
Ann Beattie (1947 - ) by Karen Bernardo: Ann Beattie has been compared in many ways to John Updike and John Cheever because of her suburban... - Commentary by Karen Bernardo
- Arthur Conan Doyle - Biography
Arthur Conan Doyle by Karen Bernardo: Arthur Conan Doyle wrote himself into history as the creator of the eccentric and brilliant detective Sherlock...
- Bessie Head - Biography
Bessie Head (1937-1986) by Karen Bernardo: Born in South Africa of a white mother and a black father, it is no surprise that Bessie Head deals extensively in her works with the politics of...
- Bobbie Ann Mason - Biography
Bobbie Ann Mason (1940 - ) by Karen Bernardo: A friend of mine, reading one of Bobbie Ann Mason's short stories in a literary magazine, remarked, 'I can't see what's so 'literary' about...
- Charles Dickens - Biography
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) by Karen Bernardo: The work of Charles Dickens defined the poverty of the Industrial Revolution as no other author ever has. He made it his virtual life's...
- Clarice Lispector (1925-1977) - Biography
Clarice Lispector (1925-1977) by Karen Bernardo: Clarice Lispector's quirky stories demonstrate her fascination with the creative process, rather than the actual act of...
- D.H. Lawrence - Biography
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) by Karen Bernardo: Americans often have a distinctly romantic view of the British countryside, assuming it to consist of quaint villages, magnificent...
- Edgar Allan Poe - Biography
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) by Karen Bernardo: Ever since Edgar Allan Poe began writing in the early 1830s, his work has become synonymous with terror, death, and Gothic horror...
- Ernest Hemingway - Biography
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) by Karen Bernardo: On the surface, Ernest Hemingway may seem an unlikely candidate for a bestselling writer. He was an indifferent student in high school,...
- Eudora Welty - Biography
Eudora Welty (1909 - ) by Karen Bernardo: Eurora Welty's fiction chronicles the South by lovingly revealing the eccentricities of its people. She was born in Jackson, Mississippi...
- F. Scott Fitzgerald - Biography
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) by Karen Bernardo: To some extent, most writers reflect their lives and times in their works. However, few writers live their works and write their lives quite as...
- Flannery O'Connor - Biography
Flannery O'Connor (1925-64) by Karen Bernardo: Flannery O'Connor has the reputation of writing some of the quirkiest fiction in the annals of American literature. Her characters are...
- Franz Kafka - Biography
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) by Karen Bernardo: The stories of Franz Kafka cannot easily be mistaken for anyone else's; they range from slightly unnerving to quite patently insane, and...
- Fyodor Dostoevsky - Biography
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) by Karen Bernardo: Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote out of a radical Christian faith. This may seem an odd thing to say about a writer who created...
- Guy de Maupassant - Biography
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) by Karen Bernardo: The French writer Guy de Maupassant grew up in a home dominated by his artistic and ambitious mother; the father...
- H.P. Lovecraft - Biography
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) by Karen Bernardo: Most of us have, at one time or another, wrenched ourselves out of the grip of a nightmare, only to reflect back upon the dream's...
- Heinrich Böll - Biography
Heinrich Bölll (1917-1985) by Karen Bernardo: Heinrich Böll was born in Cologne during the waning years of World War I, the son of a sculptor. He came of age during the...
- Henry James - Biography
Henry James (1843-1916) by Karen Bernardo: Henry James was what might be called an Anglophile; although born in New York City, he felt much more at home in England, and...
- Isaac Babel - Biography
Isaac Babel (1894-1941?) by Karen Bernardo: Isaac Babel was born in the Russian city of Odessa. His father was a merchant, and sources differ about the family's economic status...
- James Baldwin - Biography
James Baldwin (1924-1987) by Karen Bernardo: James Baldwin is probably best-known for his novel Go Tell It On The Mountain , a searing account of the religious conversion...
- James Joyce - Biography
James Joyce (1882-1941) by Karen Bernardo: The literary reputation of the Irish writer James Joyce rests largely on books few people except literature scholars have actually...
- James Thurber - Biography
James Thurber (1894-1961) by Karen Bernardo: James Thurber has been called one of the world's greatest humorists. Full of sophistication, charm and wit, his stories and essays...
- John Champlin Gardner - Biography
John Champlin Gardner by Karen Bernardo: He was born in Batavia, New York in 1933; his father was a dairy farmer and lay Presbyterian minister, and his mother was an...
- John Cheever - Biography
John Cheever (1912-1982) by Karen Bernardo: John Cheever had the unique ability to see the monstrous in the mundane. He wrote about the American suburbs, and chronicled its...
- Joseph Conrad - Biography
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) by Karen Bernardo: Joseph Conrad's masterpiece, the novella "Heart of Darkness," forms an integral part of the school curriculum in English-speaking...
- John Updike - Biography
John Updike by Karen Bernardo: John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932, but spent his teenage years in Shillington, PA, which would form the model...
- Kate Chopin - Biography
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) by Karen Bernardo: Kate Chopin is best known for her novella The Awakening -- if, in fact, she is 'known' at all. After her death, three generations of...
- Leo Tolstoy - Biography
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) by Karen Bernardo: There are some artists who spend their lives shrouded in mystery -- whose works obscure as much about the person behind them than...
- Margaret Atwood - Biography
Margaret Atwood (1939- ) by Karen Bernardo: Born in Ottawa, Canada, Margaret Atwood's childhood was anything but ordinary. Her father, an entomologist, worked and raised his...
- Nathaniel Hawthorne - Biography
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) by Karen Bernardo: Nathaniel Hawthorne is best-known as a novelist, the author of such seminal works as The Scarlet Letter. Yet few people realize...
- Raymond Carver - Biography
Raymond Carver (1938-1988) by Karen Bernardo: The short stories of Raymond Carver feature ongoing themes of loss and disillusionment, set against a backdrop of drinking...
- Saki (H.H. Munro) - Biography
Saki (H.H. Munro) (1870-1916) by Karen Bernardo: Hector Hugh Munro -- more commonly known as Saki -- was born in Akyab, Burma. This was during the period when Burma, like...
- Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette - Biography
Colette (1873-1954) by Karen Bernardo: The French author we now know as Colette was born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in Saint-Saveur-en-Puisaye, a village in Burgandy. Her family...
- Stephen Crane - Biography
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) by Karen Bernardo: Stephen Crane has been called the first modern American writer, and there is good reason for that claim. Born in New Jersey six...
- Willa Cather - Biography
Willa Cather (1873-1945) by Karen Bernardo: The American author Willa Cather is often remembered for her novels O Pioneers! and My Antonia , which celebrate (and often...
- William Dean Howells - Biography
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) by Karen Bernardo: William Dean Howells, more often remembered as a critic than a writer, is typically associated with the realist movement in...
- William Faulkner - Biography
William Faulkner (1897-1962) by Karen Bernardo: William Faulkner -- a Mississippi native -- grew up in a twentieth-century South that was still imbued with the flavor of the nineteenth...
