Photo courtesy of the Bass Photo Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
James Whitcomb Riley – Indianapolis, Indiana
read more
Section: Author Houses
An archive of all that’s available online from The New Territory. Shop our back issues for more.
Charles Dickens – Lebanon, Illinois
Charles Dickens in Illinois. Finding places where the whispers of the spirits occasionally break through. Literary Landscapes by Ryan Byrnes.
Mark Twain – Hannibal, Missouri
Discerning fact from fiction regarding Hannibal’s most famous resident. Literary Landscapes by Cindy Lovell.
Mark Twain – Elmira, New York
The quirky characters and social dynamics of Twain’s time in Elmira, New York. Literary Landscapes by Matt Seybold.
Mark Twain – Hartford, Connecticut
Twain’s Midwestern books, written in his beautiful and eccentric Hartford home. Literary Landscapes by Jacques Lamarre.
Mark Twain – London, England
A ruined corner of London that will always be a little paradise for Twain’s ghost. Literary Landscapes by Thomas Ruys Smith.
Mark Twain – London, England
Twain in London, between the upheavals of travel and the resumption of familiar routines. Literary Landscapes by Susan Kumin Harris.
John G. Niehardt – Branson, Missouri
Best known as a Nebraska poet, Niehardt’s three decades in Branson are marked only by a small boulder with a bronze plaque, sitting on the corner between the Koi Garden Plaza strip mall and the Branson Visitors Center.
Toni Morrison – Lorain, Ohio
Toni Morrison’s childhood home—Black American resilience amidst the shared, cruel landscapes of white supremacy in Lorain, OH.
Ron Wilson – Manhattan, Kansas
Ron Wilson & Lazy T Ranch—the Poet Laureate of Kansas talking poetry and connection with the state’s Poet Lariat.
Nellie Maxey – Kinsley, Kansas
Nellie Maxey & Sod House Museum—moving cross-country to Kinsley, KS, 100 years apart.
Peter H. Clark – St. Louis, Missouri
Clark, a Black socialist who had been collaborating with German radicals in Cincinnati since the days of abolitionism, was well prepared for relationship-building.
R. A. Lafferty – Tulsa, Oklahoma
R. A. Lafferty 1724 S. Trenton Ave.Tulsa, Oklahoma By Michael Helsem “Everything, including dreams, is meteorological.” – R. A. Lafferty, ”Narrow Valley” A couple of years ago, my wife and I were visiting my young niece and her husband in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they...
Bonnie Jo Campbell – Comstock, Michigan
Bonnie Jo Campbell H House Comstock, Michigan By Lisa DuRose The Kalamazoo River flows right through the center of Comstock, Michigan, behind the library and township hall and the 24-hour gas station. Past Merrill Park where people feed bread to ducks. It floods every...
Tennessee Williams – St. Louis, Missouri
Tennessee Williams 4633 Westminster Place St. Louis, Missouri By Devin Thomas O’Shea Tennessee Williams called St. Louis “cold, smug, complacent, intolerant, stupid and provincial,” in a 1947 interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, playing the heel to his...
Lorine Niedecker – Blackhawk Island, Wisconsin
Lorine Niedecker’s River Cabin—America’s greatest unknown poet, writing in a riverside cabin that appears to shrug off the idea of annual flooding.
Malcolm X – Omaha, Nebraska
3448 Pinkney Street—the site of Malcolm X’s first home offers a more complex portrait of Midwestern mythologies.
John Bartlow Martin – Herman, Michigan
Smith Lake Camp—a sanctuary in the Upper Peninsula, a place that “is not geared to make your visit painless.”
Richard Wright – Chicago, Illinois
Richard Wright house—a modest brownstone among “great sweeping corridors of concrete and ingrained prejudice.”
Lew Wallace – Porter County, Indiana
Lew Wallace Grand Kankakee MarshPorter County, Indiana By Matthew A. Werner Indiana once had one of the greatest natural habitats in North America: the Grand Kankakee Marsh. Author Lew Wallace loved it so much, he kept a houseboat on its thruway, the Kankakee River....
Jean Shepherd – Hammond, Indiana
Jean Shepherd’s childhood home—written as both a “mythical place” and an avatar of Hammond, IN, “just a few miles upwind” of steel mills, oil refineries, and polluted rivers.
Aldo Leopold – Baraboo, Wisconsin
Aldo Leopold’s Writing Shack—the “land ethic” of a converted chicken coop, feeding the soul in Sand County. #LiteraryLandscapes by Marc Seals.
Sandra Cisneros – Chicago, Illinois
Humboldt Park—where the condo that replaced the house on Mango Street “has an attenuated look, seeming to both belong and not belong.”
Willa Cather – Red Cloud, Nebraska
Willa Cather & the Pavelka Farmstead—where, writes Christine Pivovar, “I could imagine myself as one of Ántonia’s daughters, kneading the dough for kolaches.”
John Joseph Mathews – Osage County, Oklahoma
LiteraryLandscapes: Tallgrass Prairie Preserve—Mason Whitehorn Powell on John Joseph Mathews, Osage identity, and becoming a part of the balance in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.