21st-century American novelists

Aimee Friedman (born 1979) is the author of several young adult novels published by Scholastic Inc., Point and S&S. Her novels South Beach (2004) (a New York Times bestseller), French Kiss (2005), Hollywood Hills (2007) and The Year My Sister Got Lucky (2008) focus on the scandalous adventures of on-again, off-again best friends Holly Jacobson and Alexa St. Laurent. Friedman released Sea Change on June 1, 2009. A Novel Idea (2005) is a romantic comedy about a teenager who starts a book club in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Friedman wrote one of the four stories in the holiday collection Mistletoe (2006), which also features stories by Nina Malkin, Hailey Abbott, and Melissa de la Cruz. Friedman wrote a short story, "Three Fates" for the book 21 Proms. In 2007, Friedman published, along with artist Christine Norrie, a graphic novel entitled Breaking Up which details the complicated dynamics of junior year in an arts school in New York. In 2016, she published Two Summers.Friedman grew up in Queens, New York, attended Bronx High School of Science, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001 with a BA in English from Vassar College. She resides in Manhattan. She went to a dance school with her older sister.

Charles Leonard Harness (December 29, 1915 – September 20, 2005) was an American science fiction writer.

Edwin A. "Bud" Shrake, Jr. (September 6, 1931 – May 8, 2009) was an American journalist, sportswriter, novelist, biographer and screenwriter. He co-wrote a series of golfing advice books with golf coach Harvey Penick, including Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, a golf guide that became the best-selling sports book in publishing history. Called a “lion of Texas letters” by the Austin American-Statesman, Shrake was a member of the Texas Film Hall of Fame, and received the Lon Tinkle lifetime achievement award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award.

John Gleason Cramer Jr. (born October 24, 1934) is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, known for his development of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. He has been an active participant with the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Elmer Kelton (April 29, 1926 – August 22, 2009) was an American author, known for his Westerns. He was born in Andrews County, Texas.
He graduated from the University of Texas in 1948. Kelton worked as the farm and ranch editor of the San Angelo Standard-Times from 1948 to 1963. He served as the associate editor of Livestock Weekly from 1968 to 1990. Kelton's memoir, Sandhills Boy, was published in 2007.
Kelton's novels have won seven Spur Awards, from the Western Writers of America, and three Western Heritage Awards, from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. He also received a Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement.

Hilary Masters (February 3, 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri – June 14, 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was an American novelist, the son of poet Edgar Lee Masters, and Ellen Frances Coyne Masters. He attended Davidson College from 1944 to 1946, then served in the U.S. Navy from 1946 to 1947 as a naval correspondent. He completed his BA at Brown University in 1952.Masters began his writing career after graduation in New York City with Bennett & Pleasant, press agents for concert and dance artists. Next he worked independently as a theatrical press agent for Off Broadway and summer theaters from 1953 to 1956. He then moved into journalism with the Hyde Park Record, in Hyde Park, New York from 1956 to 1959. In the 1960s he was a Democratic candidate for New York's 100th Assembly District. He also worked as a freelance photographer for Image Bank and exhibits.
He taught writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Drake University, Clark University, Ohio University, and the University of Denver. From 1983 until his death 32 years later he served as Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Masters married Polly Jo McCulloch in 1955 (divorced, 1986); they had three children. In 1994 he married the writer Kathleen George. Masters resided in Pittsburgh's Mexican War Streets and died at home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Richard Harris Leigh (16 August 1943 – 21 November 2007) was a novelist and short story writer born in New Jersey, United States to a British father and an American mother, who spent most of his life in the UK. Leigh earned a BA from Tufts University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Stanley Albert Schmidt (born March 7, 1944) is an American science fiction author and editor. Between 1978 and 2012 he served as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine.

Stephen W. Leigh (born February 27, 1951) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, artist, and musician. He also works as a lecturer at Northern Kentucky University, teaching creative writing. He has published speculative fiction as Stephen Leigh, as S. L. Farrell, and once as Matthew Farrell.Steve Leigh was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lives there. He plays guitar and sings in a band named Toast.

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.