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Famous writers from different states

So I was trying to think of the most famous writers I could from each state.  A few were obvious (Cather, Faulkner, Toole).  Still, I didn’t come up with too many–it turns out I’m not actually sure where most writers are from.  I put the name in italics if I’ve never read a book by the author.

California–John Steinbeck?  Jack London?  Charles Bukowski?  Raymond Chandler?

Colorado–Hunter S. Thompson?

Georgia–Carson McCullers

Illinois–Ernest Hemingway

Indiana–Kurt Vonnegut

Louisiana–John Kennedy Toole

Maine–Stephen King

Massachusetts–Melville?  Nathaniel Hawthorne? (no, I never made it through The Scarlet Letter), Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, oh, I’ve got a recent one–Robert Parker (the Spenser mysteries)

Mississippi–William Faulkner, Eudora Welty (I think)

Missouri–Mark Twain

Nebraska–Willa Cather

New Jersey–Junot Diaz (Oscar Wao was set there, I assume he’s from there)

New York–Walt Whitman (Ok, he’s more of a poet, but he’s who I came up with), Langston Hughes? Ralph Ellison? (obviously they lived in Harlem, but were they from there?), Stan Lee (!), about a million others who lived in NY but weren’t from there

North Carolina–David Sedaris

Ohio–Harriet Beacher Stowe (I think), P.J. O’Rourke, Harvey Pekar

Oklahoma–S. E. Hinton (Lee told me this one, and how great is it that OK’s most famous author is YA?)

Pennsylvania–John Updike (aren’t his books set in suburban Philadelphia?)

Virginia–Edgar Allan Poe (I know Baltimore claims him but I think he was from Richmond originally)

Washington State–Frank Herbert

Leave any others you know in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.

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