43 Writers from Portland, Maine

Spencer Albee is an American musician, singer and songwriter from Portland, Maine. Albee has been a major figure in the Portland music scene for over two decades and is locally renowned for his songwriting and musical abilities. He is known for his distinctive voice as well as the depth and diversity of his work. Previously, Albee fronted As Fast As and was the keyboardist and backup singer for the band Rustic Overtones. Albee released the solo album Spencer in July 2013.

Louisa Dow Benton was an American linguist, translator, and letter writer. She became physically disabled from rheumatism, unable to walk, and lost almost the entire use of her hands. She learned to read Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, and Russian without any instruction. Then she took up Volapük, and became well-known as a Volapük scholar. She carried on correspondence with several linguists in Europe and associations for the spreading of this language.

Florence Brooks Whitehouse was an American suffragist, activist and novelist from Maine. In 2008, Whitehouse was inducted to the Maine Women's Hall of Fame. She was an early feminist who was considered radical for her support of Alice Paul and the tactics of the National Women's Party.

Erastus Brooks was an American newspaper editor and politician from New York.

William Robinson "W. R. " Brown was an American corporate officer of the Brown Company of Berlin, New Hampshire. He was also an influential Arabian horse breeder, the founder and owner of the Maynesboro Stud, and an authority on Arabian horses.

Henry Sweetser Burrage was a United States clergyman, editor and author.

Howard Louis Carr Jr. is an American conservative radio talk-show host, political author, and award-winning news reporter. He hosts The Howie Carr Show recorded at WRKO in Boston and broadcast on weekdays to an audience based in New England, in addition to writing three columns a week for the Boston Herald.

Owen Gould Davis was an American dramatist known for writing more than 200 plays and having most produced. In 1919, he became the first elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America. He received the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Icebound, His plays and scripts included works for radio and film.

Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn was an American soldier, lawyer, author, and statesman. Dearborn was the first President of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and the author of many books.

David LeFevre Dodd was an American educator, financial analyst, author, economist, and investor. In his student years, Dodd was a protégé and colleague of Benjamin Graham at Columbia Business School.

Jonathan Edwards is an American singer-songwriter and musician best known for his 1971 hit single "Sunshine".

Fanny Fern, was an American novelist, children's writer, humorist, and newspaper columnist in the 1850s to 1870s. Fern's popularity has been attributed to her conversational style and sense of what mattered to her mostly middle-class female readers. By 1855, Fern was the highest-paid columnist in the United States, commanding $100 per week for her New York Ledger column. A collection of her columns published in 1853 sold 70,000 copies in its first year. Her best-known work, the fictional autobiography Ruth Hall (1854), has become a popular subject among feminist literary scholars.

Phillip M. Hoose is an American writer of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles. His first published works were written for adults but he turned his attention to children and young adults, in part to keep up with his daughters. His work has been well received and honored more than once by the children's literature community. He won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Nonfiction, for The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (2004) and the National Book Award, Young People's Literature, for Claudette Colvin (2009).

Joseph Holt Ingraham was an American author.

Heidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and was a founding editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Culture+Travel, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), The Uses of Enchantment (2006), and The Vanishers (2012). She is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award

James Otis Kaler was an American journalist and author of children’s literature. He wrote under the name James Otis.

Elijah Kellogg, Jr. was an American Congregationalist minister, lecturer and author of popular boy's adventure books.

Horatio Collins King was a Union Army soldier who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the American Civil War. He also served as a U.S. lawyer, politician and author.

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 61 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

Capt. Christopher Levett was an English writer, explorer and naval captain, born at York, England. He explored the coast of New England and secured a grant from the King to settle present-day Portland, Maine, the first European to do so. Levett left behind a group of settlers at his Maine plantation in Casco Bay, but they were never heard from again. Their fate is unknown. As a member of the Plymouth Council for New England, Levett was named the Governor of Plymouth in 1623 and a close adviser to Capt. Robert Gorges in his attempt to found an early English colony at Weymouth, Massachusetts, which also failed. Levett was also named an early governor of Virginia in 1628, according to Parliamentary records at Whitehall.

Marian Adele Longfellow O'Donoghue was an American writer, one of the founders of the National League of American Pen Women, in 1897.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England.

Samuel Longfellow (1819–1892) was an American clergyman and hymn writer.

Lois Lowry is an American writer. She is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Giver Quartet and Number the Stars. She is known for writing about difficult subject matters and complex themes in works for young audiences.

Andrea Louise Martin is an American-Canadian actress, singer, author and comedian, best known for her work in the television series SCTV and Great News. She has appeared in films such as Black Christmas (1974), Wag the Dog (1997), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016), and Little Italy (2018). She has also lent her voice to the animated films Anastasia (1997), The Rugrats Movie (1998) and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001).

Shailer Mathews (1863–1941) was an American liberal Christian theologian, involved with the Social Gospel movement.

Isaac McLellan was an American author and poet, some of whose work has achieved notability through publication in anthologies.

Helen Maud Merrill was an American litterateur and poet from Maine. Her first published poem was in the Waterville Sentinel, in 1882. During the decade of 1882-1892, Merrill contributed numerous poems to the St. Nicholas Magazine, Portland Transcript, the Gospel Banner and other journals. She also engaged in editorial work.

John Neal was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art, fought for women's rights, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement.

Malcolm Edwin Nichols was a journalist and a U.S. political figure. Nichols served as the Mayor of Boston in the late 1920s. He came from a Boston Brahmin family and was the most recent Republican to serve in that post.

Laurence Everett Pope II was an American diplomat. He was the United States Ambassador to Chad from 1993 to 1996 and former US Chargé d’Affaires to Libya. Pope held a number of senior posts in the Department of State. He was the Director for Northern Gulf Affairs (1987–1990), Associate Director for Counter-Terrorism (1991–1993), U.S. Ambassador to Chad (1993–1996), and Political Advisor to General Anthony Zinni USMC, Commander-in-Chief of United States Central Command (1997–2000).

George Henry Preble was an American naval officer and writer, notable for his history of the flag of the United States and for taking the first photograph of the Fort McHenry flag that inspired the U.S. national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss was an American author, well known for her hymn "More Love to Thee, O Christ" and the religious novel Stepping Heavenward (1869). Her writings enjoyed renewed popularity in the late 20th century.

Edna Ann Proulx is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.

John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851) was an abolitionist, newspaper publisher, and colonizer of Liberia where he moved from the United States. He was born in Jamaica to an English father and enslaved mother. As a child he traveled to the United States with his father and received a formal education, becoming the first African American to graduate from Hebron Academy and Bowdoin College.

Harriet Winslow Sewall was an American poet, and editor of the collected letters of Lydia Maria Child.

Seba Smith was an American humorist and writer. He was married to Elizabeth Oakes Smith, also a writer, and he was the father of Appleton Oaksmith.

Elizabeth Strout is a US-American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her seven novels.

Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat (1823–1908) was an American author, patron and reformer from Portland, Maine. Sweat received her education in Portland public schools and the Roxbury Latin School. Mussey married Lorenzo De Medici Sweat at age 26 in 1849 and began keeping a journal. Her husband was a lawyer; he graduated from Bowdoin College and served in the United States Senate and Maine House of Representatives. Their home, known as the Sweat Mansion, is now part of the Portland Museum of Art. The Sweats traveled all over the world. She was fluent in French, German, Italian, and Russian. Sweat was an avid philanthropist; she bequeathed their home and an additional 100,000 dollars to the Portland Society of Art to construct a building adjacent to her home for the museum. Many of her donations were to Bowdoin College, where both her husband and her father, John Mussey, graduated. A noted poet, journalist, and author, Sweat wrote the first American lesbian novel, Ethel's Love Life.

Alan Shaw Taylor is an American historian specializing in early United States history. He is the author of a number of books about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution and the early American Republic. Since 1995, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Royall Tyler was an American jurist and playwright. He was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard University in 1776, and then served in the Massachusetts militia during the American Revolution. He was admitted to the bar in 1780, became a lawyer, and fathered eleven children. In 1801, he was appointed a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. He wrote a play, The Contrast, which was produced in 1787 in New York City, shortly after George Washington's inauguration. It is considered the first American comedy. Washington attended the production, which was well-received, and Tyler became a literary celebrity.

Samuel Gray Ward was an American poet, author, and minor member of the Transcendentalism movement. He was also a banker and a co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among his circle of contemporaries were poets and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller who were deeply disappointed when Ward gave up a career in writing for business just before he married.

Nathaniel Parker Willis, also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children's nurse.