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
Nan Fry
Nancy Mallet Fry was born in Missouri and grew up in Connecticut. She earned a bachelor of arts at Wells College and a PhD in Medieval Studies at Yale University before settling in the greater DC area. She taught at The Writer’s Center, and in the Academic Studies Program at the Corcoran College of Art + Design from 1983 through 2005.
Fry authored one full-length book of poetry, Relearning the Dark (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1991) and a chapbook of riddle poems translated from Anglo-Saxon, Say What I Am Called (Sibyl-Child, 1988). Her poems appeared on posters in the transit systems of DC, Baltimore, and Ft. Collins, Colorado as part of the Poetry Society of America’s “Poetry in Motion” Program, on a Bethesda Poetry Bench Project, and in numerous anthologies, including Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin, Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast, The Beastly Bride, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Faery Reel, Rye Bread: Women Poets Rising, Hungry As We Are: An Anthology of Washington Area Poets, and The Poet’s Cookbook: Recipes from Germany. She also wrote occasional fiction; a story of hers was included in the anthology Gravity Dancers. In addition, her work was republished in textbooks, including The Creative Process and Discovering Literature.
Fry received an EdPress Award for excellence in educational journalism, and an Individual Artist’s Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. For over ten years, she coordinated a poetry reading series at Westmoreland Church in Bethesda, Maryland.
Just some of our many homes...
Philip K. Dick
708 Varnum St. NW
William Safire
6200 Elmwood Rd.
Mery Berri Chapman Hansbrough
1100 Alabama Ave SE, Washington, DC, USA
Rafael Heliodoro Valle
4715 16th St NW
Seabury Grandin Quinn
1430 Monroe Street NE
Henry Adams
2017 I Street NW
Vasily P. Aksyonov
1812 Wyoming Ave. NW
Vasily P. Aksyonov
4434 Lingan Rd. NW
Andy Razaf
531 9th St NE, Washington, DC
Edwin Palmer Hoyt
756 11th St. SE
Jean Johnson
6041 Ridge Drive, Bethesda, MD, USA
Elizabeth C. Sullam
1662 32nd St NW
Elizabeth C. Sullam
725 24th St. NW
Mary Zurhorst Gray
301 East Capitol, SE, Washington, DC
Randall Jarrell
3916 Jenifer St. NW
James M. Cain
6707 44th Ave.
Courtland Darke Baker
1724 Q Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Floyd Dell
1851 Ingleside Terrace NW
Floyd Dell
6307 Lone Oak Dr.
Clara Barton
5801 Oxford Road
Clara Barton
926 T Street NW, Washington DC
Clara Barton
437 Seventh St. NW
Sinclair Lewis
3028 Q St. NW, Washington, DC
Sinclair Lewis
1639 19th St. NW, Washington DC
Andrei Gromyko
1125 16th Street, 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)