Contemporary Authors

Brief biographical and bibliographical information on more than 130,000 authors from the United States and the rest of the world. While coverage is international, emphasis is given to the English-speaking world, with more than half the authors from the United States. Includes novelists, poets, playwrights, non-fiction writers, academic writers, journalists, and scriptwriters; and each entry typically provides information on career history, writings, and works in progress, as well as personal information such as date of birth, marital status and address. Most also include URLs for web sites about the authors and those sites maintained by authors themselves. Many entries include critical commentary, often extensive in the case of prominent authors.

The database can be searched by author of course, but also by title, subject, year of birth or death, place of birth or death, ethnicity, and nationality. Advanced searching allows combining multiple fields.

Each page of search results includes a link to search Google for images in order to retrieve portraits and other pictures related to the search (though it might be best to refine searches by putting the author's name in quotation marks).

For help using these indexes see: How do I find an article on my topic?

Primarily 1900+.

Monthly (for the database as a whole; individual entries are updated much less frequently, with some articles significantly out of date).

Contemporary Authors (For holdings see the .)

Brief biographical data, primary and secondary bibliographies, and-in some cases-concise commentary on author's works.

Contemporary Authors

Biographical Information

Cinema, Film & Television; English Language and Literature; French Language and Literature; Literature in General; Theater and Dance; Book Reviews