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

Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder

Ellen Tarr O’Connor worked as a journalist. As a young woman, she worked as a mill-hand in Lowell, Massachusetts, an experience that radicalized her. She became a feminist, socialist, vegetarian, and dress reform advocate. She moved to DC to work as a governess in the home of abolitionist Gamaliel Bailey, and began writing for his newspaper, the National Era. She also contributed to other progressive papers, including the Liberator, and a monthly paper on women’s rights called Una.

She married William Douglas O’Connor in 1856, and did not write or publish again until their separation, when she published Myrtilla Miner: A Memoir (1885) about the founder of an antebellum school for African American girls in DC. She reconciled with her husband at the end of his life, in time to nurse him through his final illness. After his death, in 1889, she edited two posthumous books of his, Three Tales, and Heroes of the Storm. She subsequently moved to Providence, Rhode Island and married Albert L. Calder in 1892. She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown.

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Just some of our many homes...

Wendell Phillips Stafford

1725 Lamont St. NW, washington, DC

Wendell Phillips Stafford

1661 Crescent Pl. NW, Washington, DC

Frances Parkinson Keyes

2400 16th St. NW

Frances Parkinson Keyes

1900 Q St. NW, Washington DC

Ellis L. Yochelson

12303 Stafford Lane

Eli Flam

11 Pinecrest Court, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Julia Magruder

1906 Calvert St. NW

George Watterston

224 Second St. SE, Washington, DC

Daoma Winston

3531 Yuma St. NW

Philip K. Dick

708 Varnum St. NW

Andy Razaf

531 9th St NE, Washington, DC

Sinclair Lewis

3028 Q St. NW, Washington, DC

Sinclair Lewis

1639 19th St. NW, Washington DC

Rudolph Fisher

1607 S St. NW, Washington DC

Rudolph Fisher

245 Florida Ave NW

Emma V. Brown

3044 P St. NW, Washington DC

Anna Julia Cooper

201 T Street NW, Washington DC

Emily Edson Briggs

619 D St. SE, Washington DC

George Washington Parke Custis

3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Hwy

George Washington Parke Custis

321 Sherman Dr., Fort Myer, VA

Augustus Thomas

310 A Street NE, Washington, DC

Cissy Patterson

15 Dupont Circle NW

Murray Leinster

639 8th Street NE

Rafael Heliodoro Valle

4715 16th St NW

Joseph Owono

2349 Massachusetts Ave, NW

Triloki Nath Kaul

2700 Macomb St NW

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Author 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)