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
Charles W. Bailey II
A celebrated journalist, editor and novelist, Charles W. Bailey II spent most of his creative life living in DC serving as the Washington News Correspondent for the Minneapolis Tribune from 1950 to 1983 and later an editor at National Public radio from 1984-1987.
He authored three popular novels with his colleague Fletcher Knebel: No High Ground (1960), Seven Days in May (1962), and Convention (1964). He also authored The Land Was Ours: A Novel of the Great Plains (1991) and a non-fiction book, Conflicts of Interest: A Matter of Journalistic Ethics (1984)
Seven Days in May was adapted into a celebrated 1964 film starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Ava Gardner with a screenplay by Rod Serling. The story of an attempted military coup of the U.S. government at the height of the cold-war was filmed in and premiered in DC. According to the director, John Frankenheimer, the production received support from the White House; John F. Kennedy had read the novel and believed the scenario a possibility given the tone in American politics at the time.
Just some of our many homes...
Mildred Cram
1227 S St. NW, Washington DC
Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson
2118 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Tallulah Bankhead
1868 Columbia Rd. NW
Tallulah Bankhead
1900 Q St. NW, Washington DC
George Washington Parke Custis
3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Hwy
George Washington Parke Custis
321 Sherman Dr., Fort Myer, VA
Letitia Woods Brown
4311 18th St. NW
Molly Elliot Seawell
1767 P St. NW, Washington, DC
Murray Leinster
639 8th Street NE
Ananda W. P. Guruge
2503 30th St., NW
Israel Lewis
2445 Lyttonsville Road
Randall Jarrell
3916 Jenifer St. NW
Florence Jackson Stoddard
2019 N St. NW, Washington, DC
Douglass Wallop
3435 8th St S, Arlington VA
Charles Melville Pepper
3211 13th St. NW, Washington DC
Barbara Raskin
1820 Wyoming Ave. NW
James Reston
3124 Woodley Rd. NW, Washington DC
James Reston
1637 34th St NW, Washington, DC, USA
Stephen Spender
323 Second Street SE, Washington DC
Gore Vidal
3930 Connecticut Ave NW
Gore Vidal
2660 Woodley Rd. NW
Andrei Gromyko
1125 16th Street, NW
Irene Munson Rouse
1004 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA, USA
Victor R. Daly
1614 T Street NW, Washington, DC
Victor R. Daly
1612 Manchester Lane NW
Carter G. Woodson
1538 9th St., NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in May
Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (May 21, 1796)
Adam Francis Plummer (May 14, 1819)
Jessie Benton Frémont (May 31, 1824)
LaSalle Corbell Pickett (May 16, 1843)
John Bigelow, Jr. (May 12, 1854)
Jeanie Gould Lincoln (May 28, 1855)
Robert Peary (May 6, 1856)
Wendell Phillips Stafford (May 1, 1861)
Saint-John Perse (May 31, 1887)
Henri Bonnet (May 26, 1888)
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890)
Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892)
Rudolph Fisher (May 9, 1897)
Sterling A. Brown (May 1, 1901)
Manley Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903)
Anna Roosevelt Halsted (May 3, 1906)
William Waring Cuney (May 6, 1906)
Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907)
Hervé Alphand (May 31, 1907)
Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914)
Herman Wouk (May 27, 1915)
John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917)
Daniel Berrigan (May 9, 1921)
Claribel Alegría (May 12, 1924)
David Shears (May 20, 1926)
Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932)
Stanley Plumly (May 23, 1939)
Nora Ephron (May 19, 1941)
Lee Lally (May 1943)
C. Bruce Johnson (May 5, 1950)
Tim Russert (May 7, 1950)