Pulp Fiction Writers

Ard, William (pulp fiction writer)

  (1922-1960) Also wrote as: Benn Kerr, Jonas Ward In a 10-year fiction writing career that ended with his death from cancer at the age of 37, William Ard produced a large and strong body of work. Ard could write tough, he could write tender, and he could write lyrical. He held his own in […]

Archer, Jeffrey (pulp fiction writer)

  (1940- ) A colorful figure with a high public profile in Great Britain, Jeffrey Archer’s life—a heady mix of wealth, ambition, literary and political success, and scandal—resembles nothing so much as the overblown curriculum vitae of the hero of a trashy best-seller by Harold robbins, Jackie collins . . . or Archer himself. He […]

Andrews, V. C. (Virginia Cleo Andrews) (pulp fiction writer)

  (1924-1986) The Emily Bronte of the MTV generation, V. C. Andrews has attracted a devoted and usually young following for her strange, perverse stories of madness, revenge, horror, family curses, and eternal love. Flowers in the Attic, Andrews’s first published novel, appeared in 1979, and became almost an instant cult classic, casting a spell […]

Anderson, Edward (pulp fiction writer)

  (1905-1969) Anderson was one of the writers of the 1930s who found inspiration and literary success in the travails of the Great Depression. His two novels, published within a couple of years of each other, remain among the small body of work that appears to have truly captured the feelings of the American underclass […]

Arsan, Emmanuelle (Marayat Bibidh Andriane) (pulp fiction writer)

  One of the literary touchstones of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, Emmanuelle was a fictionalized memoir by the wife of a French diplomat, an account of her sexual awakening and experimentation during her husband’s tour of duty in the torrid zone of Bangkok, Thailand. “Emmanuelle Arsan” was in reality Marayat Andriane (nee Bibidh), […]

Avallone, Michael (pulp fiction writer)

  (1924-1999) Also wrote as: Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart Avallone published hundreds of paperback originals in his long and bumpy career, everything from a hard-boiled detective series to assorted gothics, spy stories, nurse novels, erotica, juveniles, horror stories, science fiction, a driving manual for teenagers, […]

Asimov, Isaac (pulp fiction writer)

  (1920-1992) Also wrote as: Paul French Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia, not long after the revolution, and arrived on American shores with his immigrant parents at age three. His brilliant mind and a burgeoning interest in science were apparent from a very young age. For the career that lay before him, Asimov’s […]

Bannon, Ann (Ann Weldy) (pulp fiction writer)

  (1932-) Known as the Queen of Lesbian Pulp, Ann Ban-non wrote paperbacks in the 1950s and 1960s about female homosexuals that were originally marketed as sensationalism and later reclaimed as an important literary record from a time when few other cultural manifestations of lesbianism were permitted in the American mainstream. Born Ann Weldy in […]

Babcock, Dwight V. (pulp fiction writer)

  (1909-1979) Babcock was one of the stars of the “second generation” of Joseph Shaw’s Black Mask boys, nurtured by the famous editor after Black Mask—the most esteemed of all pulp magazines—had already established its particular literary school in the writings of Dashiell hammett, Horace mccoy, Raoul whitfield, Paul cain, and the others. Babcock wrote […]

Bellem, Robert Leslie (pulp fiction writer)

  (1894-1968) Also wrote as: Franklin Charles, John Saxon Robert Leslie Bellem, the Shakespeare of the Spicys, was one of the speed demons of the pulps’ golden age. He was capable of churning out a roomful of copy every day of the week and he often wrote whole issues of the lesser sort of pulps’ […]