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

Owen Dodson

Owen Dodson was chair of the Drama Department at Howard University from 1940 to 1970. His three books of poems are Powerful Long Ladder (1940), The Confession Stone: Song Cycles (1970), and The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978). His two novels are Boy at the Window (1951) and Come Home Early Child (1977). Dodson wrote over 30 plays, operas, and works for theater, including Divine Comedy (1938), The Garden Time (1939), Bayou Legend (1948), Medea in Africa (1959), The Confession Stone (1960), and Till Victory is Won (1965).

Dodson lived in his apartment on 16th Street, where, according to his authorized biography, Sorrow Is the Only Faithful One (1993), he “held court for nearly twenty years.”  He rented two apartments in a building owned by May Miller.  His biographer, James V. Hatch, writes: “There, students saw a home with original paintings, with shelf upon shelf of theater, art, and poetry books, with stacks of classical records; and there they marveled at the two carousel horses that held up the round glass table.”  In 1965, he vacated his two apartments when Miller decided to sell the building, and moved to a smaller, two-bedroom apartment at the Columbia Rd. address, until his early retirement from Howard University at age 54, in 1967.  When he retired, he moved to New York.

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Just some of our many homes...

Edith Hamilton

2448 Massachusetts Ave. NW

Hugh J. Parry

4814 Falstone Ave.

Howard Nemerov

5425 39th St NW, Washington DC

John Wesley Cromwell

1439 Swann St. NW

Whittaker Chambers

2831 28th St NW

J. Goldsborough Bruff

1009 24th St. NW

Georgia Douglas Johnson

1461 S St. NW, Washington DC

Hilary Tham

2600 N. Upshur St.

Victor R. Daly

1614 T Street NW, Washington, DC

Victor R. Daly

1612 Manchester Lane NW

Katherine Graham

2920 R St. NW, Washington DC

Katherine Graham

1624 Crescent Place, NW, Washington DC

Evangeline Bruce

1405 34th St. NW

Belle Waring

3940 Madison Street, Hyattsville, MD, USA

Nan Fry

6512 79th Place

Tim Russert

3124 Woodley Rd. NW, Washington DC

Jean Jules Jusserand

2460 16th St. NW

John A. Joyce

3238 R St. NW, Washington DC

Cecilio J. Carneiro

2015 Belmont Street NW

Horatio King

707 H St NW, Washington DC

Terence Vincent Powderly

503 Rock Creek Church Rd. NW

Elliott Roosevelt

2131 R Street NW, Washington, DC

Elliott Roosevelt

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Ward Dorrance

1517 30th St. NW, Washington DC

Ward Dorrance

1524 29th St. NW, Washington DC

Ella Dorsey

2121 California St. NW

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Author Birthdays
in June

Josiah Henson (June 15, 1789)
Horatio King (June 21, 1811)
Caroline Healey Dall (June 22, 1822)
Ambrose Bierce (June 24, 1842)
Rose Elizabeth Cleveland (June 13, 1846)
Helen Herron Taft (June 2, 1861)
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871)
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872)
William Richards Castle, Jr. (June 19, 1878)
Robert Rice Reynolds (June 18, 1884)
Floyd Dell (June 28, 1887)
Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896)
Marita Bonner (June 16, 1899)
Brainard Cheney (June 3, 1900)
Katherine Graham (June 16, 1917)
M. Carl Holman (June 27, 1919)
Gabrielle Edgcomb (June 23, 1920)
Edwin Zimmerman (June 11, 1924)
Elaine Magarrell (June 2, 1928)
Elisavietta Ritchie (June 29, 1932)
Maxine Combs (June 1937)
Henry Taylor (June 21, 1942)
Larry McMurtry (June 3, 1946)
Bruce Duffy (June 9, 1951)