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
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African American poet to become nationally known. His books of poems include Oak and Ivy (1892), Majors and Minors (1895), Lyrics of a Lowly Life (1896), Poems of Cabin and Field (1899), When Malindy Sings (1903), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905). His works of fiction include The Uncalled (1898), Folks from Dixie (1898), The Strength of Gideon (1900), and The Sport of the Gods (1902). He also wrote the lyrics for In Dahomey, the first musical written and performed entirely by African Americans to appear on Broadway.
Dunbar married Alice Dunbar-Nelson in 1898 and moved to DC where Dunbar briefly took at job at the Library of Congress. In 1900, diagnosed with tuberculosis and alcoholic, he left the area to try to regain his health. He returned to DC briefly, but the pair separated in 1902 (but never divorced), and Dunbar returned to his mother’s home in Dayton, Ohio where he died in 1906 at the age of 33.
Dunbar is remembered locally with a DC public high school named in his honor.
Just some of our many homes...
Robert Penn Warren
2445 39th St NW, Washington, DC, USA
Courtland Darke Baker
1724 Q Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Sam Lacy
1910 13th St. NW, Washington DC
Sam Lacy
775 Hobart Place NW
John Killens
1650 Harvard St. NW
Sterling A. Brown
1222 Kearney St. NE
Anna Julia Cooper
201 T Street NW, Washington DC
Paul Claudel
2460 16th St. NW
Cecilio J. Carneiro
2015 Belmont Street NW
Walter Karig
3834 Seminary Road
William Richards Castle, Jr.
1818 R St. NW
Essex Hemphill
3351 Mt. Pleasant St. NW
Emma Willard
1305-1315 30th St. NW
L. Ron Hubbard
1812 19th St NW, Washington DC
Zora Neale Hurston
3017 Sherman Ave. NW
Zora Neale Hurston
901 Rhode Island Ave. NW
John Elsberg
422 Cleveland St., Arlington, VA
Margaret Louisa Sullivan Burke
1602 15th St NW, Washington, DC, USA
George Washington Parke Custis
3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Hwy
George Washington Parke Custis
321 Sherman Dr., Fort Myer, VA
R.W. Apple
1509 28th St. NW, Washington DC
Jessie Benton Frémont
1305-1315 30th St. NW
Carlos Peña Rómulo
2253 R Street, NW, washington, DC
Carlos Peña Rómulo
3422 Garfield St NW
Carlos Fuentes
2829 16th Street, NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in March
Emily Lee Sherwood (March 28, 1839)
Emily Hawthorn (March 21, 1845)
Ella Dorsey (March 2, 1855)
John Hays Hammond (March 31, 1855)
Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (March 3, 1876)
Margaret Fishback (March 10, 1900)
Alba de Céspedes (March 11, 1911)
L. Ron Hubbard (March 13, 1911)
Lucille Fletcher (March 28, 1912)
Francis Coleman Rosenberger (March 22, 1915)
Henry Brandon (March 9, 1916)
Eugene McCarthy (March 29, 1916)
Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917)
Pearl Bailey (March 29, 1918)
Douglass Wallop (March 8, 1920)
Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921)
Shirley Graves Cochrane (March 5, 1925)
Stacy Johnson Tuthill (March 10, 1925)
Rafael Squirru (March 23, 1925)
Sandra Day O’Connor (March 26, 1930)
Judith Farr (March 13, 1936)
Jane Flanders (March 26, 1940)
James Oliver Horton (March 28, 1943)
Askia Muhammad (March 28, 1945)
Mark Wayne Craver (March 3, 1956)
Venus Thrash (March 30, 1959)