Jodi Picoult to J.D. Salinger: 10 writers from New Hampshire

Learn about 10 well-known writers who have made the Granite State home, from Jodi Picoult to J.D. Salinger.

Some of the biggest names in American literature have lived in or come from New Hampshire where they’ve found peace, solitude, and most of all, inspiration. Here’s a brief list of those who have written award-winning and wide-read books (not including the famous poets who have called our state their home; that’s a whole other article!).

Living writers from New Hampshire

1. Dan Brown

Hometown: Exeter

Best-Known Works: “The Da Vinci Code,” “Angels & Demons,” “The Lost Symbol”

Photo by Paula Lerner.

Dan Brown is best known for his 2003 historical thriller, “The Da Vinci Code,” one of the best-selling novels of all time. In 2005, Brown was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine, credited him with “keeping the publishing industry afloat; renewed interest in Leonardo da Vinci and early Christian history; spiking tourism to Paris and Rome; a growing membership in secret societies; the ire of Cardinals in Rome; eight books denying the claims of the novel and seven guides to read along with it; a flood of historical thrillers; and a major motion picture franchise.” In fact, three of Brown’s books — “The Da Vinci Code,” “Angels & Demons,” and “Inferno” — have been made into feature films.

Brown was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. His mother was a church organist and his father taught math at Phillips Exeter Academy where he grew up and went to high school. He graduated from Amherst College in 1986 with a degree in Spanish and English. Brown still makes his home in New Hampshire.

2. Jodi Picoult

New Hampshire Home: Hanover

Best-Known Works: “My Sister’s Keeper,” “Nineteen Minutes,” “Salem Falls”

The wildly popular “New York Times” bestselling author, Jodi Picoult, has published 29 novels (four of which were made into films), numerous short stories, and several issues of the DC Comics “Wonder Woman.” Her work has been translated into 34 languages and has sold over 14 million copies around the world.

She was born in New York in 1966, graduated from Princeton and Harvard, and moved to Hanover in 2000 where she lives with her husband and raised three children.

Picoult has received the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, the Alex Award from the YALSA, a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America, the NH Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Award. “I just love the privilege of being able to live in a state that is on everybody else’s vacation bucket list,” she said in an  interview with Elisa Gonzales Verdi for “New Hampshire Magazine.”

3. Ernest Thompson

New Hampshire Home: New Hampton

Best Known Work: “On Golden Pond”

Photo by Bruce Luetters/3Sixty Photography, courtesy of Ernest Thompson.

Ernest Thompson has written 35 plays that have been performed all over the world, but the most famous, by far, is the New Hampshire-set “On Golden Pond,” which he wrote in 1979 at the age of 28. The play is about an aging couple who visit their summer home in New Hampshire.

When the play was made into a 1981 movie starring Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Jane Fonda, it was filmed on Squam Lake, not far from Thompson’s home in New Hampton. The house used in the movie still stands and can be seen by boat. The play had three runs on Broadway, has been translated into 30 languages, and has been performed in 40 countries. Thompson won an Academy Award for Best Screenwriter, two Golden Globes, a Writers Guild Award, and a Broadway Drama Guild Award for Best Play.

In addition to playwriting, Thompson is also a director, actor, lyricist, public speaker, and novelist.

4 & 5. Sy Montgomery and Howard Mansfield

New Hampshire Home: Hancock

Montgomery’s Best-Known Works: “The Good Pig,” “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” “Walking with the Great Apes”

Mansfield’s Best-known Works: “In the Memory House,” “Dwelling in Possibility,” “The Bones of the Earth”

We group these two writers because the husband and wife are New Hampshire’s super literary couple, living and creating in their 134-year-old farmhouse.

Montgomery, a naturalist writer,  and scriptwriter, is the author of 34 books for adults and children. She was once called “One of the finest chroniclers of the natural world,” by “The New York Times.” Her 2006 memoir, “The Good Pig,” chronicles her relationship with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, who was raised on the family farm. “The Soul of the Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” published in 2016, received rave reviews for exploring the world of these intelligent animals and their relationship with humans. Some of Montgomery’s books have been on the “New York Times” bestseller lists and she’s received numerous awards including the “The Washington Post” Children’s Book Guild Award for Nonfiction, the Sibert Medal, ASPCA Henry Bergh Lifetime Achievement Award, and many others.

Photo by Nic Bishop, courtesy of Sy Montgomery.

Mansfield explores history and architecture and was the 2023 recipient of the Ruth & James Ewing Arts Awards for Literary Arts and is best known for “In the Memory House,” inspired by a visit to a local historical society. “Visitors to New England usually arrive with a lot of baggage,” wrote Howard Mansfield. “They are weighted down by a lifetime of Norman Rockwell, and Currier and Ives. They want nostalgia and quaintness. ‘In the Memory House’ is an attempt to see New England plain.”

6. Ernest Hebert

Best-known Work: “Dogs of March,” “The Passion of Estelle Jordan,” “Live Free or Die”

New Hampshire Hometown: Keene

Hebert began his writing life as a journalist and took off as a novelist with his first book, “The Dogs of March,” published in 1979 and singled out for excellence in a first novel by the Hemingway Foundation. It was the first in his Darby Chronicle series of six books set in the fictional North-Country town of Darby, New Hampshire over 25 years.

In addition to novels, Hebert has also written a collection of poetry and taught writing at Dartmouth College for more than 25 years. 

Late writers from New Hampshire

7. Grace Metalious

New Hampshire Home: Gilmanton

Best-Known Works: “Peyton Place” and “Return to Peyton Place”

Photo courtesy of Stacy Milbouer.

Grace DeRepentigny was born in Manchester to a poor, French-Canadian family in 1924 and married George Metalious after graduating from Manchester Central High School. The couple and their three children moved to Gilmanton in 1955 when her husband got a job teaching at the local school. They bought a 1756 farmhouse on Meadow Pond Road, which now houses Gilmanton Winery & Vineyard. A year later, Metalious’s controversial novel “Peyton Place” was published.

The book was set in a fictional New Hampshire village, where adults had affairs, people suffered from poverty and mental illness and unmarried teenagers had sex was deemed lurid by many at the time, especially the residents of Gilmanton where Metalious and her family were essentially shunned. In 1956, Metalious was quoted in an article saying, for small-town New England, “‘Peyton Place’ was the literary equivalent of kicking over a rock … All kinds of strange things crawl out.  Everybody who lives in town knows what’s going on – there are no secrets – but they don’t want outsiders to know.”

“Peyton Place” became an instant bestseller and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for a year. The only book that sold more in the 1950s, was The Bible. The book was made into a feature film and a television series and lifted the Metalious family out of poverty. However, the author did not live happily ever after. After two divorces, one separation, and years of heavy drinking, she died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 39 in 1964.

But even in death, she was controversial. Many in Gilmanton did not want the author buried there. But Metalious was way ahead of them. She had bought several lots in a remote part of the cemetery so she could rest in peace. Metalious devotees place flowers and other tokens on her grave to this day.

8. J.D. Salinger 

New Hampshire Home: Cornish

Best-Known Works: “Catcher in the Rye,” “Nine Stories,” “Franny and Zooey”

Pubic domain photo.

J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger, who was born in New York City in 1919, did not publish a lot of work, but his 1951 novel, “Catcher in the Rye,” was a critical success and influenced generations of students and English teachers alike.

After serving in the Army in World War II including at Utah Beach on D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. Salinger was hospitalized for what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which many biographers feel influenced his writing.

“Catcher in the Rye” begins when its hapless protagonist, Holden Caufield, gets kicked out of Pencey Preparatory School and rages against the “phonies” in the world of the adult establishment. After the book was published, Salinger tired of the attention its popularity ignited. and he left his native New York City for the peace and anonymity of Cornish, New Hampshire. He lived there from 1953 until his death at 91 in 2010.

9. Tomie dePaola

New Hampshire Home: New London

Best-Known Works: “Strega Nona,” “The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush,” “The Art Lesson” 

Tomie dePaola was a writer and illustrator of over 270, mostly children’s books which sold over 25 million copies around the world. He was born in Connecticut, went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts. In addition to writing, he also taught college in Massachusetts, California, and Colby-Sawyer College in New London.

He eventually bought a 200-year-old farmhouse in New London, where he lived and worked until his death at 85 in 2020.

His work has been recognized with the Smithson Medal from the Smithsonian Institution, and the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show Lifetime Achievement Award. The American Library Association gave him the Caldecott Honor and Newbery Honor awards, and the Children’s Literature Legacy for “substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.”

10. Eleanor Hodgman Porter

New Hampshire Hometown: Littleton

Best-known Work: “Pollyanna,” “Pollyanna Grows Up.”

Drive down Main Street in Littleton, and you can’t miss the life-sized statue of a girl, arms open wide with the best smile ever. That would be Pollyanna Whittier, in front of the Littleton Library welcoming visitors to her birthplace — the mind of hometown writer Eleanor H. Porter, who was born here in 1868.

Porter was a conservatory-trained singer but began writing romance fiction and children’s books after she married in 1892. It wasn’t until 1913, when “Pollyanna” was published, that she received national recognition. The book about an ever-cheerful orphan girl changing a small, New England town with her sunny outlook was among the top eight best-selling novels in the country when it was published. Porter went on to write 15 novels and dozens of short stories before she died at age 51 but none as famous as the book whose title became a synonym for blind faith and naive optimism. 

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.