American writers of the 20th century

1. J. D. Salinger

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Since its debut, The Catcher in the Rye has sold more than 60,, copies; seventy years later, Holden Caulfield is still discovered by thousands of adolescents.

2. Harper Lee

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Her only book was the Pulitizer-prize-winning To Kill A Mockingbird; sixty-one years later, it is still read and revered from Africa to America. The work helped dislodge some of America&#;s stubbornly embedded ideas about race.

3. Tennessee Williams

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America’s Shakespeare wrote poetically&#;and prolifically about love, hate, and envy in a myriad of masterpieces:
A Streetcar Named Desire; Cat on a HotTin Roof; The Glass Menagerie.

4. Maya Angelou

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Poet; Performer; Playwright; Author of cookbooks;
Seven memoirs, including I Know Why theCaged Bird Sings.

5. Joan Didion

(b. )
Essayist. Hollywood Script Writer. Novelist. Known for the acerbic
The White Album; Play It as It Lays; The Year of Magical Thinking.

6. Willa Cather

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Known for her life-on-the-plains novels:
My Antonia; O Pioneers! Lucy Gayheart,
and the Pulitzer prize winning, One of Ours.

7. Toni Morrison

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The Bluest Eye; Sula; Tar Baby, and Beloved.
First African American Woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature ().

8. Truman Capote

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His childhood friend and neighbor, Harper Lee, assisted with the In Cold Blood research; he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms; The Grass Harp; and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

9. Anne Tyler

(b. )
Baltimore; Quirky families. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant;
The Accidental Tourist; Noah’s Compass; Clock Dance.
Deserves the Nobel.

John Steinbeck

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An oeuvre about conflict; The Grapes of Wrath; The Pearl; Of Mice and Men.
Nobel Prize Recipient.