– novelist; author of Bright Lights, Big City James McMichael – poet; awarded the 1999 Arthur Rense Prize Terrence McNally – playwright; winner of six Tony Awards and nominated for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Perfect Ganesh Maile Meloy – novelist and short story writer; awarded The Paris Review's 2001 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for her story "Aqua Boulevard" Margaret Mitchell – novelist; awarded the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind Helen Curtin Moskey – poet Robert C. O'Brien – journalist and children's author; awarded the 1972 Newbery Medal for Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Tim O'Brien – novelist and short story writer; prominent author of fiction about the Vietnam War, including The Things They Carried, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award Edwin O'Connor – novelist, winner of the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Edge of Sadness Flannery O'Connor – novelist and short story writer; notable author in the Southern Gothic style Frank O'Hara – poet, prominent member of the New York School John O'Hara – novelist; author of Appointment in Samarra, named one of the TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005 Charles Olson – poet and critic, associated with the second generation American Modernist poets; author of The Maximus Poems Eugene O'Neill – playwright; awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature and four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama Edgar Allan Poe - writer, poet, editor, and literary critic J.F. Powers – novelist and short story writer; winner of the 1963 National Book Award for Morte d'Urban Anne Rice – horror novelist; author of bestselling Interview with a Vampire series Ryan Max Riley – humorist and freestyle mogul skier on the US Ski Team Nora Roberts – romance novelist; first inductee into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame Kay Ryan – poet and academic; currents Poet Laureate of the United States Michael Ryan – poet; awarded the 1990 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for God Hunger John Patrick Shanley – playwright and screenwriter; winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Doubt: A Parable Nicholas Sparks – author and screenwriter Mickey Spillane – crime novelist; author of bestselling Mike Hammer detective novels John Kennedy Toole – novelist; posthumously awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Confederacy of Dunces Jim Tully – novelist, playwright,