Katherine Irene Kurtz (born October 18, 1944) is an American fantasy writer, author of sixteen historical fantasy novels in the Deryni series, as well as occult and urban fantasy. Resident in Ireland for over twenty years, she moved to Virginia in 2007.
Caroline Knapp (November 8, 1959 – June 3/4, 2002) was an American writer and columnist whose candid best-selling memoir Drinking: A Love Story recounted her 20-year battle with alcoholism. She was the daughter of noted psychiatrist Peter H. Knapp, who was a researcher of psychosomatic medicine.
Susanna Kaysen (born November 11, 1948) is an American author, best known for her 1993 memoir Girl, Interrupted.
Paige Rense, also known as Paige Rense Noland (May 4, 1929 – January 1, 2021) was an American writer and editor who served as editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest magazine from 1975 until 2010. She founded the Arthur Rense Prize poetry award. Rense also transformed the cooking magazine Bon Appétit into its modern format, was editor-in-chief of GEO, and wrote a mystery novel, Manor House (Doubleday, 1997).
Margot Zemach (November 30, 1931 – May 21, 1989) was an American illustrator of more than forty children's books, some of which she also wrote. Many were adaptations of folk tales from around the world, especially Yiddish and other Eastern European stories. She and her husband Harvey Fischtrom, writing as Harve Zemach, collaborated on several picture books including Duffy and the Devil for which she won the 1974 Caldecott Medal.
Barbara Lee Payton (born Redfield; November 16, 1927 – May 8, 1967) was an American film actress best known for her stormy social life and battles with alcoholism and drug addiction. Her life has been the subject of several books, including her autobiography I Am Not Ashamed (1963). Also, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (2007) by John O'Dowd, L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes and Bad Times (2005) by John Gilmore and B Movie: A Play in Two Acts (2014) by Michael B. Druxman. She married five times.
Suzette Haden Elgin (born Patricia Anne Suzette Wilkins; November 18, 1936 – January 27, 2015) was an American researcher in experimental linguistics, construction and evolution of languages and poetry and science fiction writer. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association and is considered an important figure in the field of science fiction constructed languages. Her best-known non-fiction includes her Verbal Self-Defense series.
Melanie Thernstrom (born 1964) is an American author and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine who frequently writes about murders and crime.
Tama Janowitz (born April 12, 1956) is an American novelist and a short story writer. She is often referenced as one of the main "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney.
Jean Marie Auel (; née Untinen; born February 18, 1936) is an American writer who wrote the Earth's Children books, a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores human activities during this time, and touches on the interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. Her books have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.