Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe. — Wikipedia

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also known as Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she wrote after a severe bout of post-partum depression. She was the daughter of Frederic B. Perkins.

Mary Elizabeth Counselman was an American writer of short stories and poetry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_El...

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history. Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. In 1837, he published Twice-Told Tales and became engaged to painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody the next year. He worked at a Custom House and joined a Transcendentalist Utopian community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before returning to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and their three children. Much of Hawthorne's writing centers around New England and many feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His work is considered part of the Romantic movement and includes novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend, the United States President Franklin Pierce.

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Norwegian descent, who rose to prominence in the 1940's with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was Shot Down Over Libya. Today the story is published as A Piece of Cake. The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by the Saturday Evening Post for $900, and propelled him into a career as a writer. Its title was inspired by a highly inaccurate and sensationalized article about the crash that blinded him, which claimed he had been shot down instead of simply having to land because of low fuel. His first children's book was The Gremlins, about mischievous little creatures that were part of RAF folklore. The book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made, and published in 1943. Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. He also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, usually with a dark sense of humour and a surprise ending. Many were originally written for American magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy and The New Yorker, then subsequently collected by Dahl into anthologies, gaining world-wide acclaim. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories and they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death. His stories also brought him three Edgar Awards: in 1954, for the collection Someone Like You; in 1959, for the story "The Landlady"; and in 1980, for the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on "Skin".

Pseudonym of May Eliza Frost Aka May Eliza Harvey, Eliza Mae Harvey. May Eliza Frost went by the name Eli Colter, in print and in her private life. She adopted that name in the early 1920s and used it as her byline in hundreds of stories, serials, and novels, mostly Westerns, but also including what she called "problem life stories" and weird fiction. She was born on September 30, 1890, in Portland, Oregon, where she spent most of the first half of her life. She attended the Ladd School in her native city, but when she was thirteen, blindness struck. She regained her sight and—determined to become a writer—began a course of self-education. May Eliza played piano and pipe organ in movie houses to make her living. In 1922 she submitted a story to Black Mask Magazine. It was her first submission and her first published story. Over the next thirty years, the name Eli Colter became a fixture on the covers of pulp magazines and popular novels. Eli Colter wrote a dozen stories and serials for Weird Tales, beginning with "Farthingale's Poppy" in July 1925. The fourth part of her serial "On the Dead Man's Chest" was voted second most popular of all stories printed in Weird Tales in April 1926. She was in good company, for H.P. Lovecraft came in first with "The Outsider," while Robert E. Howard's "Wolfshead" received third place. Eli Colter topped her previous mark with the most popular stories in January 1927 ("The Last Horror"), August 1927 (part three of the serial "The Dark Chrysalis"), and August 1928 ("The Man in the Green Coat"). "The Last Horror" fell into seventh place among all-time most popular stories behind works by A. Merritt, C.L. Moore, H.P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, Nictzin Dyalhis, and Edmond Hamilton. It was also reprinted in the February 1939 issue and was voted fourth most popular story by readers of Weird Tales for that issue. Despite her popularity, Eli Colter never earned a spot as the author of a cover story for Weird Tales.

Eudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930. During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs. Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown. Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson. Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.

Zenna Chlarson Henderson was born on November 1, 1917 in the Tucson, Arizona area. She graduated from Arizona State in 1940 with a Bachelors degree in education and worked as a teacher in Arizona throughout her life. She died on May 11, 1983, at the age of 65, in Tucson. Henderson is known almost entirely for short stories about "The People." The People are a race of sensitive, human-looking aliens with psychic abilities who are separated after crash-landing on Earth but come to find each other over a period of many years. Publishing her "People" stories in the leading science fiction magazines of the 50's, 60's and 70's, Henderson became a pioneer in many areas of science fiction literature. She was one of the first female science fiction writers, and was one of an even smaller number who wrote openly as a woman, without using male-sounding pseudonyms or initials (James Tiptree, Jr.; C.L. Moore; etc.). Henderson was one of the first in science fiction to truly take young people seriously and write expressive, mature stories from their point of view. She drew on her experience as a teacher of young people, and was able to bring a rare level of insight to her use of young characters. Henderson's youthful protagonists are neither adults forced into young bodies, nor are they frivolous caricatures. They are very human, complete souls, yet marked by authentic signs of youth and innocence. Interestingly enough, Lois McMaster Bujold and Orson Scott Card, both of whom mention Henderson as an important early influence, have also been among the most successful chroniclers of young people, with such Hugo- and Nebula-award winning novels as Falling Free and Ender's Game. Her books and stories about The People were the basis for the movie The People, 1972, starring William Shatner and Kim Darby. Despite similarities, both Escape to Witch Mountain, 1975, and Return to Witch Mountain, 1978, were a result of books by Alexander Key.

Richmal Crompton Lamburn was initially trained as a schoolmistress but later became a popular English writer, best known for her Just William series of books, humorous short stories, and to a lesser extent adult fiction books. Crompton's fiction centres around family and social life, dwelling on the constraints that they place on individuals while also nurturing them. This is best seen in her depiction of children as puzzled onlookers of society's ways. Nevertheless, the children, particularly William and his Outlaws, almost always emerge triumphant.