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
David Shears
David Shears was a Washington correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph from 1961 to 1965, and, after a long assignment as Bonn bureau chief in Germany, from 1981 until his retirement in 1986. His nonfiction books are Paddle America (1996, co-authored with his son, Nicholas Shears), Ocracoke: Its History and People (1989), and The Ugly Frontier (1970)
Shears served in the British navy during WWII and graduated from the University of Oxford in England. He worked briefly as a journalist for the Bristol Evening Post before becoming a foreign correspondent for Reuters (1951-1961) and joining the staff of the Daily Telegraph. His journalism covered Cold War spies, the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, and the civil rights movement in the U.S. After his retirement in 1896, he stayed on in DC, where he was active with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and volunteered with an international student exchange program, Youth for Understanding.
Just some of our many homes...
Atanas Slavov
9011 Lindale Drive
James M. Cain
6707 44th Ave.
Dee Brown
1717 R St. NW, Washington DC
Leonora Speyer
1318 30th St NW
Edward Christopher Williams
912 Westminster St. NW
Anna Roosevelt Halsted
2131 R Street NW, Washington, DC
Anna Roosevelt Halsted
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Jean Jules Jusserand
2460 16th St. NW
Emma Willard
1305-1315 30th St. NW
Thomas Law
1252 6th St. SW
Cecilio J. Carneiro
2015 Belmont Street NW
Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren
Commandant's Headquarters, Navy Yard, Washington DC
George M. Lightfoot
1329 Missouri Ave. NW
Archibald MacLeish
1520 33rd St. NW
Archibald MacLeish
607 Oronoco St
John Bigelow, Jr.
1836 Jefferson Place Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
J. Saunders Redding
7935 Orchid St. NW
Ward Dorrance
1517 30th St. NW, Washington DC
Ward Dorrance
1524 29th St. NW, Washington DC
Ellis L. Yochelson
12303 Stafford Lane
Samuel Gompers
1527 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Samuel Gompers
2122 First St. NW, Washington DC
Florence Bailey
1834 Kalorama Rd NW, Washington, DC, USA
Sigmund Skard
3704 33rd Place 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)