This project documents the homes of literary authors who once lived in the greater Washington, DC region. We wanted to honor the widest range of literary authors possible, including authors of different backgrounds, writing styles, and influences. We include novelists, poets, playwrights, and memoirists. We do not include writers who were solely journalists, and, with few exceptions, authors of genre literature. We have tried hard to include authors from a range of time periods, from the city’s founding in 1800 through the present.

Recent Additions

What’s New?

We got a great review in the Washington City Paper in August 2020, calling our project “an online database of more than 300 writers and their D.C. homes [that] offers a glittering who’s who of Washington literary history.”

Our official relaunch celebration took place on November 29, 2018. After a decade of implementing this project independently, co-editors Kim Roberts and Dan Vera were pleased to celebrate the project’s new permanent home.  Sponsored by HumanitiesDC, this updated version of the website features a responsive design easily navigable by desktop or smartphone users. They have promised to continue and preserve our research on writers’ homes in perpetuity.

HumanitiesDC is one of 56 state humanities councils and the capital’s local affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

With our latest additions, we are now documenting the homes of 405 writers who lived and wrote in the greater Washington, DC region!

Featured Author

Irene Munson Rouse

Irene Munson Rouse is the author of the poetry collections, Petty Street (2009) and Private Mythologies (1999). She was raised in Arlington, and graduated from James Madison College in 1950. Briefly an English teacher and later a children’s librarian, Rouse married, raised a large family of five children, and took up a career as an antiquarian book seller, running a succession of book shops in Fairfax, Falls Church, Alexandria, and the Eastern Shore. She hosted a poetry reading series in her Alexandria shop, “Positively Prince Street,” in the 1970s and ‘80s, and published an anthology of the same name in 1979. In retirement, she took up painting.

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Just some of our many homes...

Ann Darr

4902 Falstone Ave.

Roald Dahl

2136 R St. NW, Washington DC

Pepita Crounse

2419 Wyoming Ave NW, Washington, DC, USA

Pepita Crounse

3031 Gates Rd NW, Washington, DC, USA

Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson

2118 Massachusetts Ave. NW

Hervé Alphand

2221 Kalorama Road, NW

Mery Berri Chapman Hansbrough

1100 Alabama Ave SE, Washington, DC, USA

Charlotte Forten Grimké

1608 R St. NW, Washington DC

Larry L. King

3025 Woodland Dr NW, Washington DC

Reed Whittemore

4526 Albion Rd.

Reed Whittemore

1518 28th St. NW

Robert E. Sherwood

1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

St. Clair McKelway

2805 P St. NW, Washington, DC

St. Clair McKelway

2071 Park Rd. NW, Washington, DC

Alain Locke

1326 R St. NW, Washington, DC

Alain Locke

1309 R St. NW, Washington DC

Frances Parkinson Keyes

2400 16th St. NW

Frances Parkinson Keyes

1900 Q St. NW, Washington DC

LaSalle Corbell Pickett

2853 Ontario Rd. NW

Ulysses S. Grant

3238 R St. NW, Washington DC

Ulysses S. Grant

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Zahara Heckscher

1214 Irving St NW, Washington, DC, USA

Mary Church Terrell

326 T St. NW, Washington, DC

Sinclair Lewis

3028 Q St. NW, Washington, DC

Sinclair Lewis

1639 19th St. NW, Washington DC

Daoma Winston

3531 Yuma St. NW

Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder

1015 O St. NW, Washington DC

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Author Birthdays
in January

William Douglas O’Connor (January 2, 1832)
Julia Thompson Von Stosch Schayer (January 7, 1842)
William Henry Babcock (January 19, 1849)
Terence Vincent Powderly (January 22, 1849)
Samuel Gompers (January 27, 1850)
Augustus Thomas (January 8, 1857)
Alice Tisdale Hobart (January 28, 1882)
Elmer Davis (January 13, 1890)
Harvey Fergusson (January 28, 1890)
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891)
Muna Lee (January 28, 1895)
John Dos Passos (January 14, 1896)
Catherine Drinker Bowen (January 1, 1897)
Carlos Peña Rómulo (January 14, 1899)
May Miller (January 26, 1899)
Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902)
Ruth Moore (January 1, 1903)
Jeane L. Dixon (January 5, 1904)
Harry Sylvester (January 19, 1908)
Audrey Wurdemann (January 1, 1911)
John Killens (January 14, 1916)
Henry Morgenthau III (January 11, 1917)
Jean Johnson (January 1918)
Mary Zurhorst Gray (January 6, 1919)
William Meredith (January 9, 1919)
Anthony Hecht (January 16, 1923)
Ann B. Knox (January 31, 1926)
Betty Parry (January 5, 1927)
Irene Munson Rouse (January 1, 1928)
William Peter Blatty (January 7, 1928)
Larry L. King (January 1, 1929)
Barbara F. Lefcowitz (January 15, 1935)
Lou Stovall (January 1, 1937)
Judith McCombs (January 20, 1939)
Charles Sebree (January 1, 1985)