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Ever wonder which writers live in New York City and where? We’ve rounded up ten writers who reside here, but we’re not all that sure exactly where. Why? Unlike musicians, actors, and other celebrities, writers play things much closer to the vest. They are also likely to earn less money, be more frugal in spending on their abodes and stay in one place longer.
Colson Whitehead
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Colson Whitehead just won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Underground Railroad, “an inventive and searing take on slavery in 1850s Georgia,” according to USA Today. Whitehead, who grew up in Manhattan and lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, for a long while, now resides somewhere deep in Brooklyn.
Jacqueline Woodson
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Jacqueline Woodson is a longtime Brooklynite, well-known for her award-winning multicultural books for young adults (Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Book Award, Caldecott Medal, and so many more). Her 2014 book, Brown Girl Dreaming, was a multiple award winner, including The National Book Award. It was also one of the books President Barack Obama bought and highlighted on a trip to his local bookstore while in office.
Francine Prose
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Novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic Francine Prose lives in the Hudson Valley. She is still, however, a fixture on the NYC literary scene. With various awards, fellowships, grants, and other honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, Prose is very much a writer’s writer. She divides her time between teaching and writing and has published more than 20 works of fiction.
Andrew Solomon
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Literary, arts, mental health, and LGBT rights activist, author, and journalist Andrew Solomon is also a multiple award-winning authors. Along with the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Wellcome Book Prize, and Lambda Literary Award, Solomon has also secured a Pulitzer Prize. Solomon, the current President of PEN American Center, lives in Greenwich Village.
Walter Mosely
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In New York City, the prolific author Walter Mosely lives to write. Known for his bestselling mystery series featuring East Rawlins, Mosely also writes science fiction, political texts, short fiction, and plays. He has been awarded the O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and Pen America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, among other honors.
Sapphire
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NYC-based author and performance poet, Sapphire, had her novel Push turned into the film “Precious.” Sapphire’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, The New Yorker, and other publications.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Jonathan Safran Foer, Best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, lives somewhere in Brooklyn. He is a creative writing instructor at NYU and published the book; Here I Was in 2016.
Sloane Crosley
Wikimedia Commons
Sloane Crosley, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and Interview Magazine, lives in the West Village. Known for her two collections of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number, she published the novel The Clasp in 2015.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-American physician, biological scientist, and author, is best known for his 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. For that book, Mukherjee won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2011. An assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University, his other books are The Gene: An Intimate History and The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science.
Amy Sohn
By Amy Sohn via Wikimedia Commons
Park Slope, Brooklyn-based novelist, and journalist Amy Sohn’s books include Run Catch Kiss, My Old Man, Prospect Park West, its sequel Motherland, and Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell, a companion guide to the television series. Sohn also appears on TV as a commentator on popular culture.
So, if you’ve ever wondered which writers live in New York City and where we hope this helps bring you up to date on NYC literary doings, even if not necessarily dwellings.
