- Francis Scott Key
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Frederick Douglass
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
- James Ryder Randall
- Sidney Lanier
- Otto Mergenthaler
- Lizette Woodworth Reese
- Edith Hamilton
- W.E.B. Du Bois
- Emily Post
- Gertrude Stein
- Upton Sinclair
- H.L. Mencken
- Christopher Morley
- Katherine Anne Porter
- Zora Neale Hurston
- James M. Cain
- Dashiell Hammett
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- John Dos Passos
- Ogden Nash
- Countee Cullen
- Karl Shapiro
- Dudley Randall
- Billie Holiday
- Walter Lord
- Murray Kempton
- Leon Uris
- Russell Baker
- Frank O'Hara
- Adrienne Rich
- Frank DeFord
- Barry Levinson
- John Waters