Writers from Des Moines

Gerald Irvin Williamson (May 19, 1925 – April 12, 2023) was an American Reformed theologian, pastor, and author.

Michael G. Bryson (August 22, 1942 – May 22, 2012) was a news and sports reporter and editor from Des Moines, Iowa and the elder brother of travel writer Bill Bryson. He co-authored a book The Babe Didn't Point: And Other Stories About Iowans and Sports with his son Michael G. Bryson Jr in 1989. He wrote The Twenty-Four-Inch Home Run in 1990.
Bryson was an editor and associate publisher of the Sun Press Newspapers in Hawaii from 1979 to 1986. He covered the New York Mets in 1969 while a sports reporter for the Associated Press. He was a news reporter for the Des Moines Register and Tribune from 1970 to 1979. He attended Drake University.

Datus C. Proper (1934-2003) was a political analyst with the U.S. State Department Foreign Service, an outdoors writer, and a fly fisherman.

Kenneth W. Thompson (August 29, 1921 – February 2, 2013) was an American academic and author known for his contributions to normative theory in international relations. In 1978 he became director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He retired as director in 1998, but continued to head its Forum Program until 2004.

Richard Clement Wade (July 14, 1921 in Des Moines, Iowa – July 18, 2008 in Manhattan, New York) was an American historian and urban studies professor who advised many Democratic politicians and candidates. As a historian, he pioneered the interdisciplinary application of social science techniques to the study of urban history and promoted cities as an important academic subject.

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College, and presently Professor of Practice at Arizona State University.
During his tenure at the Environmental Studies Center at Oberlin College, Orr demonstrated how institutions of higher learning can teach ecological literacy while practicing sustainable design and encouraging more eco-friendly lifestyles on campus. Orr's books, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (1992) and Earth in Mind (1994-2004), proposed ways in which education should evolve to emphasize sustainability, not only in the narrow parameters of ecology-based programs, but in wider curricula, from political science and economics to liberal arts.

Kenneth Marshall Watson (September 7, 1921 – August 18, 2023) was an American theoretical physicist and physical oceanographer.

Jerry Douglas (November 15, 1935 – January 9, 2021) was an American film director and screenwriter, notably of gay pornographic films, as well as a novelist, playwright, and theatre director. He wrote and directed the play Tubstrip, which appeared on Broadway in 1974, starring Casey Donovan. His cinematic work won numerous adult film industry awards, and he was inducted into the Grabby Awards Hall of Fame and the GayVN Awards Hall of Fame.

Charles Eliot Silberman (January 31, 1925 – February 5, 2011) was an American journalist and author.
Silberman was born in Des Moines, Iowa. After service in the Pacific during World War II, he gained a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University in 1946 and also undertook graduate studies at Columbia. Subsequently, he taught at Columbia and City College of New York before joining Fortune magazine in 1953 where he remained until the early 1970s.He was the author of Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice (1978), a study of crime and the American criminal justice system.Silberman used econometric methods to measure the effectiveness in terms of criminal deterrence of two factors: the degree of punishment; and the probability of apprehension. A simple "expected loss" model would predict that deterrent effect would depend only on the result of multiplying the penalty by the probability of it occurring. Silberman concluded that contrary to this model, the likelihood of punishment had a greater effect in most situations. Silberman also stated, "Crime does more than expose the weakness in social relationships; it undermines the social order itself, by destroying the assumptions on which it is based."
Silberman's book Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education is regarded as one of the leading investigations into and critiques of the performance of the American educational system and has been praised for its scope and insight.He was also the author of Crisis in Black and White and A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today.Silberman died on February 5, 2011, in Sarasota, Florida, aged 86. He had four sons and seven grandchildren.

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).