20th-century American novelists

Frederic Prokosch (May 17, 1906 – June 2, 1989) was an American writer, known for his novels, poetry, memoirs and criticism. He was also a distinguished translator.

James Farl Powers (July 8, 1917 – June 12, 1999) was an American novelist and short story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of Catholic priests in the Midwest. Although not a priest himself, he is known for having captured a "clerical idiom" in postwar North America. His first novel, Morte d'Urban, won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction.

David Robert Plante (born March 4, 1940, in Providence, Rhode Island) is an American novelist, diarist, and memoirist of both French-Canadian and North American Indian descent.

Julian Hudson Mayfield (June 6, 1928 – October 20, 1984) was an American actor, director, writer, lecturer and civil rights activist.

Jack Matthews (22 July 1925 – 28 November 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright and former professor. He published 7 novels, 11 story collections, a novella, and 8 volumes of essays. He was an avid book collector, and many of his book finds served as a basis for his essays and the historical topics he explored in his fiction. His 1972 novel The Charisma Campaigns was nominated by Walker Percy for the National Book Award. He has often made 19th century America and the Civil War period the setting for his fiction, starting with his 1981 novel Sassafras and most recently with the 2011 novel Gambler's Nephew (which tells the story of how an abolitionist accidentally kills an escaped slave) and a 2015 story collection Soldier Boys: Tales of the Civil War. His plays have been performed at multiple theaters around the country.

Robert James Collas Lowry (March 28, 1919 – December 5, 1994) was an American novelist, short story writer, illustrator, and independent press publisher.
Lowry was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was a literary wunderkind who began writing at the age of 8; within a year, he had stories published in the Cincinnati Times Star. He graduated from Withrow High School in 1937, after which he entered the University of Cincinnati. He was, according to biographer James Reide, a voracious reader of the literary works of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Guy de Maupassant.

George Palmer Garrett (June 11, 1929 – May 25, 2008) was an American poet and novelist. He was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2002 to 2004. His novels include The Finished Man, Double Vision, and the Elizabethan Trilogy, composed of Death of the Fox, The Succession, and Entered from the Sun. He worked as a book reviewer and screenwriter, and taught at Cambridge University and, for many years, at the University of Virginia. He is the subject of critical books by R. H. W. Dillard, Casey Clabough, and Irving Malin.

Fletcher Knebel (October 1, 1911 – February 26, 1993) was an American author of several popular works of political fiction.
Knebel was born in Dayton, Ohio, but relocated a number of times during his youth. He graduated from high school in Yonkers, New York, spent a year studying at the University of Paris and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio during 1934. Upon graduation, he received a job offer from the newspaper Coatesville Record of Coatesville, Pennsylvania. He spent the next 20 years working for newspapers, eventually becoming the political columnist for Cowles Publications. Knebel served in the United States Navy during World War II, attaining the rank of lieutenant. From 1951 to 1964, he satirized national politics and government in a nationally published column named "Potomac Fever".During 1960, he wrote a chapter on John F. Kennedy for the book Candidates 1960. This seemed to begin a passion for writing books, and he went on to write fifteen, most of them fiction, and all of them dealing with politics, intrigue and social upheaval. His best-known novel is Seven Days in May (1962, co-authored with Charles W. Bailey), about an attempted military coup in the United States. The book was a great success, reaching number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and was made into a successful movie also named Seven Days in May during 1964.
Knebel was married four times from 1935 to 1985. He committed suicide after a long bout with cancer, by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, during 1993. He is the source of the quote: "Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics."

Evan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, short-story writer, essayist and author of epic historical works. He also published under the name Evan S. Connell Jr.
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."

Vance Nye Bourjaily (September 17, 1922 – August 31, 2010) was an American novelist, playwright, journalist, creative writing teacher, and essayist.