These authors have departed for many novel destinations, but at one time or another their haunts were right here in Pittsburgh. Check out these writers with strong Steel City roots.These authors have departed for many novel destinations, but at one time or another their haunts were right here in Pittsburgh.
You’ll recognize plenty of spots in Dillard’s memoir, such as Frick Park gullies, a certain watering hole on Penn Avenue, and all those cement staircases climbing our hills. Dillard does our city proud, and her parents will make you laugh out loud.
French graduated from Penn Hills High School and photographed for the Post-Gazette for years. In Billy, a 10-year-old Mississippi boy is sent to the electric chair for supposedly murdering a white girl. A later novel, I Can’t Wait on God, follows a couple trying to ditch Pittsburgh for the Big Apple.
A Peabody graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Wideman places many of his stories of African-American family life in Homewood. Several of them are collected in Damballah.
A recent widow, children gone from the house, Pittsburgh neighborhood turning unfamiliar, navigates her new life alone. You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on Hoopla.
Sure, he has degrees from Brown and Duke, but his education began right around the corner at Linden Elementary School in Point Breeze. Philbrick is a sailor, and his painstakingly researched histories usually chronicle the ocean, its islands, or the coast. This most recent bestseller departs for a different sea – the prairie – and the battle of Sitting Bull and George Custer at Little Bighorn.
No, he wasn’t born in Pittsburgh, but Chabon spent his teen years here and attended Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. A film by the same name stars Peter Sarsgaard and Sienna Miller.