This project documents the homes of literary authors who once lived in the greater Washington, DC region. We wanted to honor the widest range of literary authors possible, including authors of different backgrounds, writing styles, and influences. We include novelists, poets, playwrights, and memoirists. We do not include writers who were solely journalists, and, with few exceptions, authors of genre literature. We have tried hard to include authors from a range of time periods, from the city’s founding in 1800 through the present.
Recent Additions
What’s New?
We got a great review in the Washington City Paper in August 2020, calling our project “an online database of more than 300 writers and their D.C. homes [that] offers a glittering who’s who of Washington literary history.”
Our official relaunch celebration took place on November 29, 2018. After a decade of implementing this project independently, co-editors Kim Roberts and Dan Vera were pleased to celebrate the project’s new permanent home. Sponsored by HumanitiesDC, this updated version of the website features a responsive design easily navigable by desktop or smartphone users. They have promised to continue and preserve our research on writers’ homes in perpetuity.
HumanitiesDC is one of 56 state humanities councils and the capital’s local affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
With our latest additions, we are now documenting the homes of 405 writers who lived and wrote in the greater Washington, DC region!
Featured Author
Egla Morales Blouin
Egla Morales Blouin is the author of two books of poems in Spanish, Carne y sombra (1957) and Estación de lluvia (1965), and two books of criticism, Ciervo y la fuente: mito y folkore del ague en lirica tradicional (1981), and Ritual y canto: mito y simbolo en la liricia tradicional iberica (1979).
Blouin translated poems and prose (from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish) by such authors as María Elena Walsh, Mercedes Sosa, Mary Oliver, John la Rose, Ilán Stavans, and Mario Benedetti. For performances at GALA Hispanic Theater and Teatro de la Luna, she translated plays by Lope de Vega, Florencio Sánchez, Senel Paz, and Carlos Gorostiza. Poems of hers were included in the anthology Al pie de la Casa Blanca: poetas hispanos de Washington DC (2010). She was born in Puerto Rico and worked for the Pan American Health Organization in DC, where she edited the Boletin de la Oficina Sanitaria Panameriana.
Just some of our many homes...
Paul Laurence Dunbar
1934 4th St. NW, Washington DC
LaSalle Corbell Pickett
2853 Ontario Rd. NW
Peter Brown
40 Florida Ave. NW
Margaret Louisa Sullivan Burke
1602 15th St NW, Washington, DC, USA
Richard Bruce Nugent
1231 T St. NW, Washington DC
Juan Ramón Jiménez
4310 Queensbury Rd.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
2480 16th St. NW
Zora Neale Hurston
3017 Sherman Ave. NW
Zora Neale Hurston
901 Rhode Island Ave. NW
William Safire
6200 Elmwood Rd.
Henrietta McCormick Hill
2400 16th St. NW
Henrietta McCormick Hill
1584 21st St. NW
Henrietta McCormick Hill
2311 Connecticut Ave. NW
Henrietta McCormick Hill
2540 Massachusetts Ave NW
Owen Dodson
1813 16th St. NW, Washington DC
Owen Dodson
1707 Columbia Rd. NW
Frederick Douglass
1411 W St. SE, Washington DC
Frederick Douglass
320 A St. NE, Washington DC
Ruth Moore
3031 Sedgwick St. NW
John F. Kennedy
1400 34th St. NW
John F. Kennedy
1528 31st St. NW
John F. Kennedy
3321 Dent Place NW
John F. Kennedy
2808 P St. NW, Washington, DC
John F. Kennedy
3307 N Street NW, Washington DC
John F. Kennedy
2480 16th St. NW
John F. Kennedy
1147 Chain Bridge Road
John F. Kennedy
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Laurence Stallings
1701 16th St. NW, Washington, DC
Emma Willard
1305-1315 30th St. NW
Victor R. Daly
1614 T Street NW, Washington, DC
Victor R. Daly
1612 Manchester Lane NW
Lilian May Miller
1458 Columbia Rd. NW
Marita Bonner
1805 2nd St. NW, Washington DC
Marita Bonner
2201 2nd St. NW, Washington DC
Ellen Maury Slayden
1631 R Street NW, Washington, DC
Ellen Maury Slayden
1638 19th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
8 Logan Circle NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in April
George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781)
Edward Everett Hale (April 3, 1822)
Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822)
John Willis Menard (April 3, 1838)
Augustus Goodyear Heaton (April 28, 1844)
Thomas Nelson Page (April 23, 1853)
Henry Berenger (April 22, 1867)
Yan Huiqing (April 2, 1877)
Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882)
Caresse Crosby (April 20, 1891)
Robert E. Sherwood (April 4, 1896)
Harlan Miller (April 3, 1897)
Duke Ellington (April 29, 1899)
Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901)
Clare Booth Luce (April 10, 1903)
Richard Eberhart (April 5, 1904)
Ward Dorrance (April 30, 1904)
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905)
William W. Warner (April 2, 1920)
Charles W. Bailey II (April 28, 1929)
Fletcher Knebel (April 28, 1929)
Octave S. Stevenson (April 28, 1930)
Doug Lang (April 11, 1941)
Gil Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949)
Christopher Hitchens (April 13, 1949)
Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957)
Yvonne Brown (April 18, 1977)