The most famous author from every state

To qualify for this list, the famed authors had to be born in their respective states, but not necessarily live out their years there.

We considered the authors' fame in terms of ubiquity, acclaim, and financial success — and awarded bonus points if the author showed state pride by setting their works there.

Melissa Stanger contributed a previous version of this post.

ALABAMA: Harper Lee

Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, the inspiration for the fictional town of Maycomb in her classic novel. The Monroe County Courthouse, where Lee watched her father practice law as a child, currently operates as a museum.

The University of Alabama alumna lived in Monroeville, just a short drive from the Mockingbird Grill and Radley's Fountain Grille, until her death in 2016.

ALASKA: Sidney Huntington

Known for: " target="_blank"Shadows on the Koyukuk: An Alaskan Native's Life Along the River"

Alaskan elder Sidney Huntington

ARIZONA: Jeannette Walls

Known for: ""

In her memoir, Jeannette Walls examines her struggles in her youth to overcome poverty and become self-sufficient. Her family moved like nomads across the Southwest, but the first place she remembers living is a small trailer park in Arizona.

A veteran of "writing what she knows," Walls also published a biography of her grandmother, an iron-willed Arizona cattle rancher, titled "Half Broke Horses."

ARKANSAS: John Grisham

Known for: "A Time to Kill"

Born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, this former lawyer is best known for his legal thrillers. But in 2001, he paid tribute to his upbringing on a farm in the coming-of-age story, "A Painted House."

There are more than 275 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, and nine of his novels have been turned into films.

CALIFORNIA: John Steinbeck

Known for: "The Grapes of Wrath"

California's most treasured author, John Steinbeck captured the beauty and (at times) unforgiving nature of the Golden State in his novels "The Grapes of Wrath," "East of Eden," "Cannery Row," and "Tortilla Flat." The Salinas native attended Stanford University.

His childhood home now houses a restaurant and gift shop.

COLORADO: Ken Kesey

Known for: ""

Considered a founding father of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s, Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, to dairy farmers. His works promoted drug use as a path to individual liberation and bridged the beatnik and hippy generations.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and " were both set in Oregon, where he was raised.

CONNECTICUT: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Known for: "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

The influential abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up in Litchfield, Connecticut.

DELAWARE: Christopher Castellani

Known for: "A Kiss from Maddalena"

Christopher Castellani is a proud product of Wilmington's Little Italy neighborhood. inspired the events

FLORIDA: Carl Hiaasen

Known for: "Hoot"

Carl Hiaasen graduated from the University of Florida and has written for The Miami Herald since he was 23 years old. His column still regularly appears in the opinion section.

His most popular books, including "Hoot," "Flush," "Tourist Season," "Skin Tight," "Strip Tease," and "Skinny Dip," take place in Florida.

GEORGIA: Flannery O'Connor

Known for: "A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Other Stories"

Flannery O'Connor shuttled between Savannah and Milledgeville, Georgia, as a child. When she was diagnosed with lupus in her 20s, she returned to the family's farm. She spent her remaining years writing two novels and dozens of short stories, known for their grotesque characters, regional settings, and low humor.

The University of Georgia Press created the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in her honor.

HAWAII: Armine Von Tempski

Known for: "Born in Paradise"

, a massive volcano that forms most of Maui, and shared the sights and natural wonders of the islands in her memoir and book-turned-film, "Hula."

She once described her career ambitions to The Honolulu Advertiser: "

IDAHO: Vardis Fisher

Known for: "Children of God"

wrote a guide

Fisher's gritty account of trappers in the fur trade era, "Mountain Men," was made into a 1972 movie starring Robert Redford, titled "Jeremiah Johnson."

ILLINOIS: Ernest Hemingway

Known for: "The Old Man and the Sea"

Ernest Hemingway found his passion for writing in the upscale Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, where he was born. In high school, he wrote for the school's newspaper and yearbook. After graduation, he left Illinois to report for

The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park operates a museum in his childhood home.

INDIANA: Kurt Vonnegut

Known for: "Slaughterhouse-Five"

Many of Kurt Vonnegut's works use his birthplace of Indianapolis, Indiana, as a symbol of American values, or contain at least one character from Indy.

In 1986, during a visit to North Central High School, he said, "

IOWA: Bill Bryson

Known for: "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

Before travel and history writer Bill Bryson shot to fame in the UK, where he currently lives, he was Des Moines' hometown boy. He attended Drake University for two years and wrote about his 1950s Middle America upbringing in his memoir, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid."

Former President Herbert Hoover, who was also born in Iowa, features prominently in Bryson's book, "One Summer."

KANSAS: William Inge

Known for: "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff"

Best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplay, "Splendor in the Grass," William Inge channeled his Kansas pride into his two books.

Editor's Note: Like many of the Midwestern states, Kansas did not have an obvious pick for this list. We went with Inge, a playwright by trade, because of his superior state pride.

KENTUCKY: Hunter S. Thompson

Known for: "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

Hunter S. Thompson, a Louisville, Kentucky, native, wrote almost a dozen books and is credited as the founder of gonzo journalism, a style of first-person reporting.

He shot to fame with the seminal sports article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." Thompson pitched the Louisville-based story to "Scanlan's Monthly" just 72 hours before the race, and quickly found himself immersed in the crowd's lewd celebrations.

LOUISIANA: Anne Rice

Known for: "Interview with the Vampire"

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Anne Rice brings the city to life in her Gothic fiction. The French Quarter provides a setting for "Interview with the Vampire," and her house in the Garden District serves as the fictional home of her characters in the "Lives of the Mayfair Witches" series.

It's rumored that Rice purchased a tomb at the St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans, where her vampire character goes to brood, for her eventual use.

MAINE: Stephen King

Known for: "The Shining"

Stephen King is the quintessential Maine author. He was born in Portland, graduated from the University of Maine at Orono, and still lives in Bangor. His red Victorian home, surrounded by a black, wrought-iron fence decorated with cobwebs, is hard to miss.

King's fictional Maine topography provides a backdrop for many of his novels, including "Carrie," "It," "The Dead Zone," "Insomnia," "Salem's Lot," and others.

MARYLAND: Nora Roberts

Known for: "The Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy"

Born in Silver Springs, Maryland, romance novelist Nora Roberts still lives in the same Boonsboro home she moved into as a newly wed teenager. owned eight properties

MASSACHUSETTS: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Known for: "The Scarlet Letter"

Editor's Note: Being that "The Scarlet Letter" is a literary staple read by almost every high school student, Hawthorne was our pick for the state of Massachusetts. Other Massachusetts-born contenders included Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Dr. Seuss, and Henry David Thoreau.

MICHIGAN: Jeffrey Eugenides

Known for: "The Virgin Suicides"

Jeffrey Eugenides found inspiration in the economic turmoil of Detroit, Michigan, for his first novel, "The Virgin Suicides." The Motor City native told NPR, "That whole feeling of growing up in Detroit, in a city losing population, and in perpetual crisis really was the mood that made me write 'The Virgin Suicides' in the first place."

His Pulitzer Prize-winning "Middlesex" is also set in Michigan.

MINNESOTA: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Known for: "The Great Gatsby"

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born and raised on a tree-lined street in St. Paul's Ramsey Hill neighborhood. In his writing, Fitzgerald described himself coming from small means, when in reality, the family lived in an

Fitzgerald's first writing to appear in print was a detective story in St. Paul Academy's newspaper when he was age 13.

MISSISSIPPI: William Faulkner

Known for: "The Sound and the Fury"

William Faulkner was raised, made famous, and buried in Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner loved Lafayette county so deeply that he created a fictitious county based on it.

He told the Paris Review, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about, and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it."

MISSOURI: Mark Twain

Known for: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

Mark Twain began his writing career as a typesetter at the Western Union paper, in his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri.

Twain holds an honorary degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia, and there is a national forest located in the southern half of the state named after him.

His boyhood home has been transformed into a museum, which aims to develop students' passion for reading and adventure through community initiatives.

MONTANA: Maile Meloy

Known for: "Liars and Saints"

Born and raised in Helena, Montana, Maile Meloy has written books for kids and adults. The Harvard College graduate is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, and has been dubbed "the first great American realist of the 21st century" in a review of her work by The Boston Globe.

NEBRASKA: Nicholas Sparks

Known for: "A Walk to Remember"

Nicholas Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a business professor and an optometrist's assistant. He wrote his first novel the summer after his freshman year at Notre Dame and, though the novel went unpublished, it was the beginning of a blockbuster writing career.

At age 24, Sparks wrote his first best-seller, "The Notebook," which spent over a year on the bestseller's list. He writes a new book nearly every year, many of which have been made into films.

NEVADA: Nevada Barr

Known for: "Track of the Cat" (Anna Pigeon book series)

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Dan Brown

Known for: "The Da Vinci Code"

Dan Brown grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father taught math and where Brown eventually attended. Brown doubted religion from a young age, which led to themes of conspiracy and and religious skepticism that are found in many of his books.

He wrote three books before "Da Vinci," which put him on the map as a best-selling author.

Editor's Note: Novelist John Irving, author of "The World According To Garp" and "The Cider House Rules" is also from New Hampshire.

NEW JERSEY: George R.R. Martin

Known for: "A Song of Ice and Fire"

While the books that inspired "Game of Thrones" take place in far-off, mythical lands, George R.R. Martin grew up in B

NEW MEXICO: Rudolfo Anaya

Known for: "Bless Me, Ultima"

Rudolfo Anaya came from a family of cattle workers and sheepherders in the tiny town of Pastura.

Overall he had a happy, active life of hunting, fishing, and exploring the plains of New Mexico, but many of his less-positive experiences — like questioning his place in the world as a Latino, or a diving accident that almost killed him at age 16 — inspired his canonical Chicano literature.

NEW YORK: Herman Melville

Known for: "Moby Dick"

Herman Melville, born in New York City in 1819, lost his father at a young age. It forced him to take on as much work as he could to help support his family.

The author of the White Whale Tale had a fascination with whales ever since he was a boy, when he heard the story of the Essex,

NORTH CAROLINA: Thomas Wolfe

Known for: "Look Homeward, Angel"

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe was recognized at a young age for his genius and enrolled at UNC Chapel Hill at age 15. After completing studies in playwriting at Harvard, Wolfe went on to write "Look Homeward, Angel," a work of fiction based on his life in Asheville.

NORTH DAKOTA: Louis L'Amour

Known for: "The Walking Drum"

Born Louis Dearborn LaMoore in 1908, the North Dakota native grew up in a medium-sized farm community to a veterinarian father. L'Amour heard tales of the Great American Frontier from his uncles and his grandfather, who lived through the Civil and Indian wars.

Hearing these tales impressed L'Amour, who went on to write his "American Tradition" novels like "The Walking Drum" and "To the Far Blue Mountains."

OHIO: Sherwood Anderson

Known for: "Winesburg, Ohio"

Sherwood Anderson was born to a poor family in Camden, Ohio, but spent his most productive and lucrative years as a writer in Clyde, where he set many of his stories.

Anderson was most prolific in the late 1910s and early '20s, when he produced "Marching Men," "Winesburg, Ohio," "Poor White," and "Many Marriages."

OKLAHOMA: Ralph Ellison

Known for: "Invisible Man"

Ralph Ellison is best known for his race exploration novel, "Invisible Man," about a black community in the South in which a man searches for his identity.

Before his writing career took off, Ellison left his home of Oklahoma City to pursue music at the Tuskegee Institute. It wasn't until Langston Hughes introduced Ellison to Richard Wright that Ellison was encouraged to take up writing.

OREGON: Beverly Cleary

Known for: "Ramona Quimby, Age 8"

Beverly Cleary's hometown in Oregon was so small, it didn't have a library. Still, she developed a love of books early on. Once she got to school, the librarians suggested she write children's books for a living, and Cleary made that her ultimate goal.

She published her first book, "Henry Huggins," in 1950, and developed many more beloved characters throughout her career.

PENNSYLVANIA: James Michener

Known for: "Tales of the South Pacific"

The Pennsylvania native didn't publish his first book, "Tales of the South Pacific," until he was nearly 40 years old, and it won him a prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

Like his Pulitzer-winning work, many of Michener's books are set in places he traveled to during his Navy service, or places he lived throughout his career.

RHODE ISLAND: Cormac McCarthy

Known for: "No Country for Old Men"

While many of Cormac McCarthy's works are set in the South, the Southern Gothic-genre writer was born in Providence, Rhode Island. McCarthy's family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when he was a child.

McCarthy was 32 when his first book, "The Orchard Keeper," was published, and he continues to publish novels on a regular basis, even at the age of 83.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Peggy Parish

Known for: "Amelia Bedelia"

Peggy Parish spent years teaching elementary school before bringing her beloved children's book character, Ameia Bedelia, to life. The "Amelia Bedelia" books — about a housekeeper who interprets all of her employers' instructions literally — have sold more than 35 million copies since it was first published over 50 years ago.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Adam Johnson

Known for: "Parasites Like Us"

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Adam Johnson grew up hearing tales of wilderness survival from the men in his family. He recalls their survivalist skills and the obstacles they faced in his back-in-time debut novel, "Parasites Like Us."

Editor's Note: South Dakota was another difficult state to fill. Other authors, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, called South Dakota home at one time or another, but were not born there.

TENNESSEE: Alex Haley

Known for: "Roots"

Raised in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley is

TEXAS: Katherine Anne Porter

Known for: "Flowering Judas and Other Stories"

Saying Katherine Anne Porter lived a hard life would be an understatement. Her mother died when she was two. Porter married young and suffered domestic violence during her first and later marriages. She almost died, twice, from two different pandemics, and endured poverty and infertility.

Still, Porter persisted. Her hardship is evident in her writing, which often explores human fallibility.

UTAH: Thomas Savage

Known for: "The Corner of Rife and Pacific"

Though Thomas Savage is best known for his Montana-set novels, the Wild West author was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He followed his mother to a Montana ranch when she remarried, and there gained inspiration for many of the books he later wrote.

VERMONT: Ralph Nading Hill

Known for: "Contrary Country: A Chronicle of Vermont"

Ralph Nading Hill was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont, and remained in the Northeast for college, where he attended Dartmouth. An authority on the Green Mountain state, Hill spent many years as the editor of Vermont Life magazine, during which time he also authored a number of Vermont-centric books, including "Contrary Country."

Editor's Note: It was surprisingly difficult to track down Vermont-born authors. Poet Robert Frost wrote in and about the state, but was born in San Francisco; and Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book" while living in Brattleboro, but was born in India.

VIRGINIA: David Baldacci

Known for: "The Camel Club"

David Baldacci describes himself as a "lifelong Virginian." He got his undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and attended law school at the University of Virginia.

He practiced law in DC for many years before making a career as legal thriller writer. Almost every one of his books has made the New York Times bestseller list, the majority of them in the No. 1 spot.

WASHINGTON: David Guterson

Known for: "Snow Falling on Cedars"

WEST VIRGINIA: Pearl S. Buck

Known for: "The Good Earth"

Pearl S. Buck, a Nobel Prize winner, was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia. She spent the majority of her life in China with her missionary parents.

WISCONSIN: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Known for: "Little House in the Big Woods"

Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose family moved from state to state for much of her life, was born in the "big woods" of Wisconsin, where her children's classic was eventually set.

Other books from her "Little House" series were also based on the places she'd lived, including Kansas, South Dakota, and Missouri. All but one of her books were nominated for the prestigious Newbery Medal for exceptional children's literature.

WYOMING: Patricia MacLachlan

Known for: "Sarah, Plain and Tall"

Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Patricia MacLachlan still carries around a bit of prairie dirt with her wherever she goes to remind herself of where she came from.