Of the following time periods, only the Chicago Black Renaissance is formally recognized by historians and scholars; the rest were coined by Adam Morgan for personal research. Writers, editors, publishers, and other literary figures are listed in order of birth year, and loosely categorized based on when they made the most impact in Chicago, though many spanned multiple eras. This listing is by no means a definitive classification; it is meant only as an organizing device.
Early Chicago (1830s-1880s)
- E.P. Roe (1838-1888)
- Eugene Field (1850-1895)
The World’s Fair Renaissance (1890s-1900s)
- Lucy Parsons (1851-1942)
- L. Frank Baum (1856-1919)
- Henry Blake Fuller (1857-1929)
- Jane Addams (1860-1935)
- Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)
- Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)
- George Ade (1866-1944)
- James David Corrothers (1869–1917)
- John McCutcheon (1870-1949)
- Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
The Modernist Renaissance (1910s-1920s)
- W. Allison Sweeney (1851-1921)
- Harriet Monroe (1860-1936)
- Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1868-1940)
- Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
- Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
- Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)
- Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
- Eunice Tietjens (1884-1944)
- Ring Lardner (1885-1933)
- Edna Ferber (1885-1968)
- Margaret C. Anderson (1886-1973)
- Floyd Dell (1887-1969)
- Fenton Johnson (1888-1958)
- Ben Hecht (1894-1964)
The Chicago Black Renaissance (1930s-1940s)
- Marita Bonner (1898-1971)
- Theodore Ward (1902-1983)
- Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987)
- Alice Browning (1907-1985)
- Richard Wright (1908-1960)
- Willard Motley (1909-1965)
- William Attaway (1911-1986)
- Margaret Walker (1915-1998)
- Margaret T. Burroughs (1915-2010)
- Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
Unrelated to the Chicago Black Renaissance:
- Margaret Ayer Barnes (1886-1967)
- Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)
- James T. Farrell (1904-1979)
The Postwar Period (1950s-1960s)
- Fanny Butcher (1888-1987)
- Horace R. Cayton Jr. (1903-1970)
- Era Bell Thompson (1905-1986)
- Nelson Algren (1909-1981)
- St. Clair Drake (1911-1990)
- Margaret Danner (1915-1984)
- Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
- Lerone Bennett Jr. (1928-2018)
- Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)
- Ronald Fair (1932-)
The Sears Tower Era (1970s-2000s)
- Cyrus Colter (1910-2002)
- Studs Terkel (1912-2008)
- John H. Johnson (1918-2005)
- Dempsey Travis (1920-2009)
- Hoyt Fuller (1923-1981)
- Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
- Samuel Eldred Greenlee, Jr. (1930-2004)
- Mike Royko (1932-1997)
- Useni Eugene Perkins (1932-)
- Sonia Sanchez (1934-)
- Leon Forrest (1937-1997)
- Bette Howland (1937-2017)
- Carolyn Rodgers (1940-2010)
- Roger Ebert (1942-2013)
- Haki R. Madhubuti (1942-)
- David Hernandez (1946-2014)
- Rane Arroyo (1954-2010)
The Fourth Chicago Renaissance (2010s-2020s)
- Eve Ewing
- Nate Marshall
- Rebecca Makkai
- Joe Meno
- Aleksandar Hemon
- Parneshia Jones
- Kathleen Rooney
- Megan Stielstra
- Sandra Cisneros
- Tara Betts
- Stuart Dybek
- Jonathan Eig
- Gillian Flynn
- Veronica Roth
- Gina Frangello
- Lindsay Hunter
- Angela Jackson
- Alex Kotlowitz
- Daniel Kraus
- Simone Muench
- Audrey Niffenegger
- Sara Paretsky
- Lori Rader-Day
- Renee Rosen
- Marcus Sakey
- Scott Turow
- Luis Urrea
- Chris Ware
- Sam Weller
- Jamila Woods
- Sandra Jackson-Opoku
- Sahar Mustafah
- Nick Drnaso
- Maryse Meijer
- Eula Biss
- Mary Anne Mohanraj
- avery r. young
- Keith S. Wilson
- Mikki Kendall
- Miles Harvey
- Krista Franklin
- Julia Fine
- Rachel DeWoskin
- Ed Roberson
- Samira Ahmed
- Rosellen Brown
- Erika L. Sanchez
- CM Burroughs
- Lee Bey
- Ben Austen
- Natalie Y. Moore
- Natasha Trethewey
- Timuel Black
- Ling Ma
- Brian Bannon
- Nina Barrett
- Kevin Coval
- Amanda Delheimer Dimond
- Donald G. Evans
- Eric Kirsammer
- Haki R. Madhubuti
- Bill Ott and Donna Seaman
- Dominique Raccah
- Stacy Ratner
- Doug Seibold
- Suzy Takacs
- Sue Burke
- Michael Zapata
- Nino Cipri
- Alec Nevala-Lee
- Many, many more TK
Chicago Literary Archive 