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List of Famous Dead People: Category - Writers
David Foster Wallace was an American writer who wrote novels, essays, and short stories. His most well known works include the novel Infinite Jest, which was hailed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Best English-Language Novels, quite an accomplishment. He also wrote the novel The Broom of the System, short story collections: Girl [...]
Messner was a Christian singer, evangelist, entrepreneur, author, talk show host, and television personality. She was the former wife of televangelist Jim Bakker (who is a convicted felon), and she co-hosted the PTL Club with him from 1976 to 1987. She is probably most remembered as wearing loads of makeup, especially mascara. She often wore [...]
Bradley was a journalist, who is best known for his 26 years of award-winning work on the CBS News show 60 Minutes. During his career Bradley was the first black television correspondent to cover the White House, anchored his own news broadcast, “CBS Sunday Night with Ed Bradley”, and covered the fall of Saigon. He [...]
Haskins was the men’s basketball head coach of Texas Western College (now known as the University of Texas at El Paso). He held the position from 1961 through 1999; his tenure included the 1966 season when his team won the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship over the University of Kentucky Wildcats, who was coached [...]
Ossie Davis was a film actor, director, and writer. He was married to actress Ruby Dee. Mostly known for his acting, he appeared in such notable films as Doctor Doolittle, I’m Not Rappaport, Grumpy Old Men, Jungle Fever, Joe Versus the Volcano, and Bubba Ho-Tep in which he played JFK. Davis was also a political [...]
LaFontaine was a voice actor who was featured in over 5,000 movie trailers, television commercials, promotions, and video game trailers. He is known for starting a lot of his voice work with “In a world…”, he parodied this in a recent GEICO commercial. During his career, LaFontaine was known for recording well over 60 promotions [...]
Pate was an Australian actor and writer who is best remembered for his roles on Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Branded, The Virginian, Batman, Mission: Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, Get Smart, Rawhide to name a few. Pate began breaking into films between 1946 and 1950. In 1949 he appeared in his first starring role in Sons [...]
Freeman is best known for co-authoring the book “100 Things to Do Before You Die”. The book had the subtitle “Travel Events You Just Can’t Miss”. He co-wrote the book in 1999 with Neil Teplica. They got the idea for the book from the website whatsgoingon.com, which they ran together from 1996 to 2001.
Kirby was one of the most recognizable, prolific, and influential comic artists of all time. He co-created some of the greatest comic book icons such as the Fantastic Four, X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and literally hundreds more. Without having any formal training, Kirby got his start in comics in when he met Fox editor [...]
Elzie Crisler Segar was a cartoonist whose claim to fame was being the creator of everybody’s favorite spinach-eating seaman Popeye the Sailor Man. Segar’s Popeye cartoon originally appeared in 1929 in the “Thimble Theatre” comic section of the New York Journal. Interestingly enough, Segar had been contributing cartoons to this publication for a decade prior [...]
William Seward Burroughs II was a writer of novels and essays as well as a painter and a spoken word performance artist. He also did a little acting including performances in Gus Van Sant films. He graduated from Harvard University after losing his virginity to a female prostitute. He then went to the Army just [...]
Angelo Bartlett “Bart” Giamatti was the father of actor Paul Giamatti, and the President of Yale University from 1978 to 1986. He then went on to become the seventh commissioner of Major League Baseball (only after being the President of the National League). He was responsible for Pete Rose leaving the league. In his Yale [...]
William Maxwell Gaines spent his early adult life in the Army as World War II started. He then became the publisher and co-editor of EC Comics which started out adapting Bible Stories then went on to publish titles like Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, the Vault of Horror (and other horror titles – sometimes [...]
Fred McFeely Rogers will forever be known as the beloved sweater-wearing, shoe-changing Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. He dazzled children for decades with his land of make believe – a kingdom of talking puppets that you were transported to via a small red trolley. The show ran new episodes from 1968 to 2001, and [...]
Elwyn Brooks White was an American author, whose most famous book would have to be the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, a story that has since been made into a film twice. He started out as an editor, and then a columnist for various New York publications, and then in the 30s decided to start writing [...]
Abraham “Bram” Stoker is known if for nothing else, for writing the novel Dracula, which has gone on to inspire thousands of other stories and movies about vampires, not to mention many film versions of Dracula itself (most notably the Bela Lugosi version). Dracula was conceived drawing influence from both Vlad the Impaler and the [...]
Beatrix is known for her time-honored children’s books which featured characters such as Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Benjamin Bunny, Johnny Town-Mouse, and Little Pig Robinson. When many may not know about Potter, is that she was also something of a scientist, considered an expert in mycology. She was actually one of the first people to [...]
Agatha Christie is one of the most popular writers in the crime and mystery genre of all time. She wrote 80 detective novels as well as a number of plays. Her books have been translated into 56 languages. Much like what could be considered her film counterpart Alfred Hitchcock, Christie was considered a “Master of [...]
Darwish was a Palestinian poet. In fact, he was considered the Palestinian National Poet. He won a variety of awards including: The Lotus Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, The Lannan Foundation Prize and the Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings.
While famous for cake mix, Duncan Hines was actually a writer of travel guides, and a restaurant/hotel critic. He published a cookbook in 1939, and by ’47, his name was well respected. It was then that Roy H. Park, an entrepreneur, wanted to sell kitchen products using the Duncan Hines name. That name was eventually [...]
Simon Gray was a British playwright, memoirist, and screenwriter. Some of his best known works included Butley, The Common Pursuit, The Year of the Jouncer, The Last Cigarette, and A month in the Country.
Schulz was a beloved cartoonist who is best known for his Peanuts comic strip. He got his start in comics after he submitted one of his drawings to The Saturday Evening Post, they paid him $40 and asked that he send more. Schulz sent in a total of 13 comics before he ended his partnership [...]
Anne Frank was a young girl that lived until the age of 15 and is famous for the diary she kept documenting here experiences in Nazi Germany. The diary went from her 13th birthday until August 1, 1944 just before her arrest. Her diary has gone on to become one of the most important entries [...]
Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel got his start drawing political cartoons and served in the animation department of the United States Air Force. Of course, he known for his time-honored children’s books that stood out from the rest thanks to his illustrations, his creation of non-existent words, and positive messages that [...]
Edward D. Wood Jr. or Ed Wood as he is commonly known is famous for making terrible movies. In fact his movie Plan 9 from Outer Space is widely regarded as the worst movie ever made. The movie has surely been outstunk by now, but it is still referred to with the title just the [...]
Howard Phillips Lovecraft is one of the most influential writers of horror, fantasy, and science fiction in history. He is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe. His work has had great influence on the likes of Stephen King, Neil Geiman, John Carpenter, and even Metallica, not to mention countless other horror authors and heavy metal [...]
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist who introduced the world to Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system. For his efforts Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. For his writings Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He didn’t return until 1994, twenty years after he was initally exiled. [...]
Frederick Hubbard Gwynne is best known for his role as Herman Munster on the classic television series The Munsters as well as his work on the show “Car 54, Where are You?”. Gwynne had some pretty memorable appearances in films as well, such as Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the Joe Pesci comedy My Cousin [...]
Benjamin “Bob” Clark was an American film writer and director, who is probably best known for his classic “A Christmas Story”, which traditionally gets played for 24 hours straight on television around the holiday season each year. Clark was also the man behind the classic teen sex comedy Porky’s and it’s sequel: Porky’s II: The [...]
Ed Foster was as a technology columnist for InfoWorld. Foster was probably best known for his blog “The Gripe Line”. Foster contributed a lot to the technology-using community in many ways during his 20-year stint with InfoWorld.