St. Louis is a city with a rich literary heritage, having been the birthplace of many renowned authors and poets, such as Maya Angelou, William Burroughs, Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot and Naomi Shihab Nye.
It is also the former home of Marianne Moore and Ntozake Shange. The city's Walk of Fame on Delmar Boulevard has awarded stars to 19 poets and writers. Visitors can pay their respects to Burroughs at the Bellefontaine de Louis cemetery and to Chopin and Tennessee Williams in Calvary, the Catholic cemetery next door. St. Louis is a paradise for book lovers, with hundreds of acclaimed visiting and local writers hosting readings, Q&A sessions and book signings each year.
Jo Ann Beard, Amy Bloom, Jericho Brown, Roxane Gay, Terrance Hayes, Eileen Myles, Treasure Shields Redmond and Alison C. Rollins are just some of the authors who have visited in the past two years. The city is also a great place for outdoor activities. Forest Park is larger than New York's Central Park and offers a variety of trails for running, biking or just strolling. It also features a European style from the 1904 World Exposition that took place on its site. St.
Louis is a cultural and culinary crossroads with an equal share of Western, Midwestern and Southern identity and cuisine. It has a vibrant café and gastropub culture with an ever-expanding organic and vegan offer. Barbecue and beer still reign supreme in the city, but craft beers are also available from 81 microbreweries. Unfortunately, St. Louis remains a divided city with housing barriers, selective disinvestment, racial profiling and violence still present in many areas.
The NAACP has issued a warning to African American travelers to “exercise extreme caution when traveling around the state” due to the fact that African Americans are 75 percent more likely to be stopped and searched by law enforcement officers than Caucasians. Living in St. Louis as a writer is an opportunity to learn more about the city's history and its people while being part of an ongoing struggle for transformation. Every state has its own distinctive writers; Mississippi has William Faulkner, Maine has Richard Russo and Stephen King, Pennsylvania has John Updike, Illinois has William Maxwell, Sandra Cisneros and Adam Langer, Washington has Stephanie Meyer and Missouri can brag about Mark Twain. George Hodgman (1959-2001) returned to his Missouri roots in Madison and Paris with his highly praised autobiography Bettyville. Daniel Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks where he has been inspired for six of his nine novels and The Outlaw Album, a collection of 12 short stories. Local color writing was popular in Louisiana during the 19th century; authors such as Kate Chopin published stories about Louisiana in national publications such as Harper's Monthly, New Princeton Review and Lippincott's Magazine.
Women writers found a forum to explore everyday life through this type of writing. In April 2021 don't miss a series of face-to-face and virtual readings by authors such as Curtis Sittenfeld with Edward McPherson and Luther Hughes with Mary Jo Bang. So what genres do authors from St. Louis typically write in? The answer is that it depends on the author's individual style but there are some common themes among St. Louis authors. Many write about their experiences living in St.
Louis or about their hometowns in Missouri or other parts of the Midwest. They often explore themes of identity, race relations, family dynamics or social issues such as poverty or crime. Authors from St. Louis also often write about their love for their city or state; they may write about its history or culture or explore its unique cuisine or outdoor activities like hiking or biking in Forest Park. No matter what genre they write in, St. Louis authors have one thing in common: they all have something unique to say about their hometown that can only be expressed through their writing.
