Writers from Philadelphia

Elisabeth Elliot (née Howard; December 21, 1926 – June 15, 2015) was a Christian missionary, author, and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca people (now known as Huaorani; also rendered as Waorani or Waodani) of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband. Returning to the United States after many years in South America, she became widely known as the author of over twenty books and as a speaker. Elliot toured the country, sharing her knowledge and experience, well into her seventies.

Paul Murray Kendall (March 1, 1911 – November 21, 1973) was an American academic and historian, who taught for over 30 years at Ohio University and then, after his retirement, at the University of Kansas.

Charlotte Serber (née Leof; July 26, 1911 – May 22, 1967) was an American journalist, statistician and librarian. She was the librarian of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, and the laboratory's only female group leader. After the war she attempted to secure a position as a librarian at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, but was rejected for lack of a security clearance; the likely reason was due to her political views. She later became a production assistant for the Broadway Theatre, and an interviewer for Louis Harris.

John McCarten (September 10, 1911, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – September 25, 1974, New York City) was an American writer who contributed about 1,000 pieces for The New Yorker, serving as the magazine's film critic from 1945 to 1960 and Broadway theatre critic from 1960 to 1967.McCarten was born in Philadelphia into an Irish-American family. After serving in the Merchant Marine, he started writing for American Mercury, Fortune, and Time during the 1930s.In 1934, he joined The New Yorker and began contributing satirical short stories and irreverent profiles. He became the magazine's regular film critic in 1945, employing a writing style that tended to be terse and was often condescending. He gained a reputation as something of a nemesis of Alfred Hitchcock in particular, whose films McCarten regularly panned. The screenplay for the 1956 British romantic comedy film The Silken Affair was adapted from an idea by McCarten.In 1960, McCarten switched to theatre criticism, where he was no less tough; on one occasion, theatrical producer David Merrick had McCarten barred from the opening night of Do Re Mi.In July 1967, McCarten suddenly quit reviewing and moved to Ireland. The following year, he submitted the first of his "Irish Sketches", a series of light pieces about Irish art and culture that ran in The New Yorker between February 24, 1968, and November 20, 1971.

W. Nelson Francis (October 23, 1910 – June 14, 2002) was an American author, linguist, and university professor. He served as a member of the faculties of Franklin & Marshall College and Brown University, where he specialized in English and corpus linguistics. He is known for his work compiling a text collection entitled the Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English, which he completed with Henry Kučera.

Richard Pitts Powell (November 28, 1908 – December 8, 1999) was an American novelist.

Truesdell Sparhawk Brown (21 March 1906, Philadelphia – 13 January 1992, Houston) was a classical scholar, ancient historian, and co-founder of the journal California Studies in Classical Antiquity, which became the journal Classical Antiquity.

Werner Hans Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg; September 5, 1935): 7  is an American author and lecturer known for founding est (offered from 1971 to 1984).: 14  In 1985, Erhard replaced the est Training with a newly designed program, the Forum. Since 1991, the Forum has been kept up to date and offered by Landmark Education. He has written, lectured, and taught on self-improvement.
In 1977, Erhard co-founded The Hunger Project, an NGO. In 1991, he retired from business and sold his existing intellectual property to his employees, who then adopted the name Landmark Education, renamed in 2013 Landmark Worldwide.

Ruth Hale Oliver (April 16, 1910 – October 3, 1988) was an American astrologer, astrology teacher, writer, and occasional actress.
She was born in Philadelphia to L. Stauffer Oliver, an attorney (born in New Jersey) and Margaret H. Scott (born in England). She was married to George Gercke in 1931 and divorced in 1940. She died on October 3, 1988, from natural causes at the age of 78. Oliver had one child, actress Susan Oliver.

Edward William Bok (born Eduard Willem Gerard Cesar Hidde Bok) (October 9, 1863 – January 9, 1930) was a Dutch-born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was editor of the Ladies' Home Journal for 30 years (1889–1919). He also distributed popular home-building plans and created Bok Tower Gardens in central Florida.