30 Writers from Birmingham, West Midlands

Mark R. Beech FRSA was a British author, journalist and broadcaster. Best known for his two books on the origins of names in rock music, and for his columns about music and the arts, Beech was the editor of DANTE magazine. A fellow of the UK Royal Society of Arts, he lived in London.

Jon Bounds, is a writer and blogger from Birmingham, England.

James Brockway was an English poet and translator, who was born in Birmingham and migrated to The Hague, the Netherlands, where he died.

Liam Brown is a best selling English writer. His debut novel, Real Monsters, was published in 2015 by Legend Press. His second novel, Wild Life, was published in 2016 and his third, Broadcast, was published in 2017. In 2019 his fourth novel, Skin, was shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize.

Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland, was an English novelist who wrote romance novels, one of the best-selling authors as well as one of the most prolific and commercially successful worldwide of the 20th century. Her 723 novels were translated into 38 languages and she continues to be referenced in the Guinness World Records for the most novels published in a single year in 1977.

James Crace is an English writer and novelist. His novels include Quarantine, which was judged Whitbread Novel of 1998, and Harvest, which won the 2015 International Dublin Literary Award, the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize.

Alan Dale was an influential British theatre critic, playwright and book author of the late Victorian and early 20th Century eras. He was born Alfred J. Cohen in Birmingham England. He arrived in New York in 1887 and became a drama critic for several New York papers i.e., New York Evening World, New York Journal and the New York American. His reviews of plays were often negative but helped sell a lot of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. The theatre world despised Dale for his acid reviews.

Jeffery Farnol was a British writer from 1907 until his death, known for writing more than 40 romance novels, some formulaic and set in the Georgian Era or English Regency period, and swashbucklers. He, with Georgette Heyer, largely initiated the Regency romantic genre.

Michael Field was a pseudonym used for the poetry and verse drama of the English authors Katharine Harris Bradley and her niece and ward Edith Emma Cooper. As Field they wrote around 40 works together, and a long journal Works and Days. Their intention was to keep the pen-name secret, but it became public knowledge, not long after they had confided in their friend Robert Browning.

Kathleen Freeman was a gay British classical scholar and author of detective novels. She was a lecturer in Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff between 1919 and 1946.

William Gallagher is a British writer and journalist. He has written Doctor Who audio plays for the Big Finish range, the stage play Manhattenhenge (2008–2009) and the Rhubarb Radio series Attachment (2009). His book on Alan Plater's The Beiderbecke Affair was published by the British Film Institute and Palgrave Macmillan on 28 September 2012.

Mike Gayle is an English journalist and novelist.

Edgar Albert Guest was a British-born American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People's Poet. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life.

John Frederick Norman Hampson Simpson, who wrote as John Hampson, was an English novelist. Best known for his 1931 novel Saturday Night at the Greyhound – an unexpected success for the Hogarth Press – he was a member of the Birmingham Group of working class authors, which included Walter Allen, Leslie Halward, Walter Brierley and Peter Chamberlain. His elder brother was a motorcycle racer, Jimmy Simpson.

William Harris was a Liberal politician and strategist in Birmingham, England, in an era of dramatic municipal reform. On his death, he was described by one obituary-writer as "one of the founders of modern Birmingham". J. L. Garvin called him "the Abbé Sieyès of Birmingham" ; and Asa Briggs "a most active and intelligent wire-puller behind the scenes". He was dubbed the "father of the Caucus", the highly organised and controversial Liberal party machine that had its origins in Birmingham, but was afterwards introduced at national level to the National Liberal Federation. He served as the first Chairman of the National Liberal Federation from 1877 to 1882. By profession he was an architect and surveyor; and he was also a prolific journalist and author.

Sir Simon David Jenkins is a British author and a newspaper columnist and editor. He was editor of the Evening Standard from 1976 to 1978 and of The Times from 1990 to 1992.

Monica Elizabeth Jolley AO was an English-born Australian writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s and forged an illustrious literary career there. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels, four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well-known writers such as Tim Winton among her students at Curtin University.

Steven Knight is a British screenwriter and film director. Knight wrote the screenplays for the films Closed Circuit, Dirty Pretty Things, and Eastern Promises, and also directed as well as wrote the films Locke and Hummingbird.

Charles Lloyd II, poet, was a friend of Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth and Thomas de Quincey. His best-known poem is "Desultory Thoughts in London".

John Nathan-Turner, born John Turner, was the ninth producer of the long-running BBC science fiction series Doctor Who. He was also the final producer of the series' first run on television. He finished the role having become the longest-serving Doctor Who producer and cast Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors, respectively.

William Edgar Oddie is an English writer, comedian, composer, musician, artist, birder, conservationist, television presenter and actor. He was a member of comedy trio The Goodies.

Jane Bragg Pitman was an English-born writer and reporter known for her shorthand in the United States. She was also active in the arts and crafts movement in the United States for her wood engravings.

John Enoch Powell was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974), then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–1987), and was Minister of Health (1960–1963).

Sheenagh Pugh is a British poet, novelist and translator who writes in English. Her book, Stonelight (1999) won the Wales Book of the Year award.

John Peter Sloan was an English actor, comedian, educator, writer and former musician who lived and worked in Italy.

Joseph Swain was a British Baptist minister, poet and hymnwriter. Born in Birmingham, and orphaned at an early age, he was apprenticed as an engraver in Birmingham and afterwards in London. He experienced a religious conversion in 1782, and was baptised by John Rippon in the Baptist meeting-house in Carter Lane, Tooley Street, Southwark, on 11 May 1783. He subsequently became a Baptist minister and pastor of East Street Baptist church in Walworth from 1792 until his death in 1796. He was a popular preacher, and during the period of his ministry it became necessary to extend the church building on three occasions.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Mandy Theresa O'Loughlin, known professionally as Kit de Waal, is a British/Irish writer. Her debut novel, My Name Is Leon, was published by Penguin Books in June 2016. After securing the publishing deal with Penguin, De Waal used some of her advance to set up the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Fellowship to help improve working-class representation in the arts. The audiobook version of My Name is Leon is voiced by Sir Lenny Henry. De Waal has also published several short stories.

Kate Williams is a British historian, author, and television presenter. She is a Professor of Public Engagement with History at the University of Reading.

Malala Yousafzai, often referred to mononymously as Malala, is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become "the most prominent citizen" of the country.