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
Katherine Graham
Katherine Graham is the author of a memoir, Personal History, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. After her husband’s suicide, she became publisher of the Washington Post for over two decades, during the time the newspaper’s most influential period, when they published the Pentagon Papers and broke the Watergate story that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Graham was named a World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute in 2000, and was given a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2002.
Just some of our many homes...
Tim Russert
3124 Woodley Rd. NW, Washington DC
Molly Elliot Seawell
1767 P St. NW, Washington, DC
James M. Cain
6707 44th Ave.
Charles Warren Stoddard
300 N St. NW, Washington, DC
Shirley Graves Cochrane
127 Seventh Street SE, Washington, DC
Alba de Céspedes
1529 18th St. NW
William W. Warner
2243 47th St. NW
Betty Parry
4814 Falstone Ave.
Nora Ephron
2853 Ontario Rd. NW
Helen Churchill Candee
1621 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Ellis L. Yochelson
12303 Stafford Lane
Clara Barton
5801 Oxford Road
Clara Barton
926 T Street NW, Washington DC
Clara Barton
437 Seventh St. NW
Stephen Spender
323 Second Street SE, Washington DC
R.W. Apple
1509 28th St. NW, Washington DC
Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder
1015 O St. NW, Washington DC
Harvey Fergusson
1435 Clifton St. NW
John Willis Menard
1843 7th Street Northwest, Shaw, Washington, DC, USA
Tallulah Bankhead
1868 Columbia Rd. NW
Tallulah Bankhead
1900 Q St. NW, Washington DC
Chasen Gaver
1801 Clydesdale Pl. NW
Octave S. Stevenson
730 24th St. NW
John Pauker
3723 S St. NW, Washington DC
John Pauker
3006 Porter St. NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in February
Emma Willard (February 23, 1787)
Henry Lytton Bulwer (February 13, 1801)
Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813)
Frederick Douglass (February 1818)
Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder (February 21, 1830)
Margaret Louisa Sullivan Burke (February 1836)
Henry Adams (February 16, 1838)
Jean Jules Jusserand (February 18, 1855)
Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice (February 27, 1859)
Philander Chase Johnson (February 6, 1866)
Zitkala-Sa (February 22, 1876)
Millicent Todd Bingham (February 5, 1880)
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (February 13, 1884)
Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885)
Mariano Brull (February 24, 1891)
Lillian Rogers Parks (February 1, 1897)
Luis Muñoz Marín (February 18, 1898)
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902)
Una Marson (February 6, 1905)
St. Clair McKelway (February 13, 1905)
Dee Brown (February 28, 1908)
Selden Rodman (February 19, 1909)
Stephen Spender (February 28, 1909)
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911)
Herman Taube (February 2, 1918)
Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920)
Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921)
Margaret Truman (February 17, 1924)
Roger Mudd (February 9, 1928)
Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931)
Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy (February 22, 1932)
Roland Flint (February 27, 1934)
Martin Galvin (February 21, 1937)
Siv Cedering Fox (February 5, 1939)
Donald Britton (February 16, 1951)