Gertrude Stein

An item at American Writers Museum

Gertrude Stein's essay "An American and France" (1936) begins, "America is my country and Paris is my hometown." Stein began to write about America soon after she arrived in Paris in 1902, drawing a great expatriate community of Americans to her-Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few.

Stein's fame as a mentor to other writers often obscures her own accomplishments. Her writing was experimental, both in language and in form. Her 900-page avant-garde epic, The Making of Americans (1925), is one of the defining works of modernism. It ostensibly tells a family saga but contains no dialogue or action and often digresses into meditations on the art of writing.

AMERICAN VOICES

An exhibit at American Writers Museum

American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.

This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.

American Writers Museum