100 Must-Read Books of the American Midwest
Recently, the Midwest lost one of its most prolific and wonderful writers – Jim Harrison. If you haven’t had a chance to read any of his work, I highly encourage picking something up at your local used bookstore whenever you have a chance. He’s a great writer and one of the pioneers of what many people associate with Midwestern literature. His indelible mark on the literary scene in my home state of Michigan is undeniable.
The Midwest produces a spectacular gamut of novelists, poets, essayists, collagists, etc. The region is home to some of the most established creative writing programs in the U.S., as well as a ton of awesome literary journals and quarterlies. The writers included on this list are connected to the region in various ways, some more loosely than others. A couple quick notes:
-Not all of the books included on this list are inherently Midwestern. Many of the authors were born in the region, while others moved to teach there or wrote books that take place there. If something seems out of place, rest assured there’s a connection, even if it’s not transparent.
-My personal reading preferences lean toward fiction and poetry, leading to an under-representation of the Midwest’s fantastic nonfiction writers.
-This is only a minuscule sampling of the Midwest. Sorry if I missed your favorite. Feel free to leave a polite note in the comments.
-I did not include more than two works by any single author, even the ones I love and adore. They’re in alphabetical order by first name and there is no ranking system.
-This list is mainly designed to introduce a wide range of fantastic Midwestern literature rather than focus solely on canonized classics.
-Disclaimer: As a native Michigander and current grad student in Northwestern’s creative writing program, you’ll find slight biases toward authors related to those aspects of myself.
Aleksander Hemon – The Lazarus Project
Alice Fulton – Palladium (Worked at UMich at time of publication)
Alice Randall – The Wind Done Gone
Angela Flournoy – The Turner House (Set in Detroit)
Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Born in Pittsburgh. I constitute the west half of Pennsylvania as Midwest)
Annie Dillard – For The Time Being
Barack Obama – The Audacity of Hope
Barack Obama – Dreams from My Father
Bonnie Jo Campbell – American Salvage
Bonnie Jo Campbell – Q Road
Carolyn Forche – Blue Hour
Catie Disabato – The Ghost Network
Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding
Chester Himes – If He Hollers Let Him Go (Missouri native)
Chester Himes – Blind Man with a Pistol
Chigozie Obioma – The Fishermen (Did his MFA at UMich, also now teaches in the Midwest at U of Nebraska)
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest (Professor at Illinois State University at time of publication)
Diane Seuss – Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open
Elizabeth Mccracken – The Giant’s House
Elmore Leonard – Get Shorty
Erik Larson – The Devil in the White City
Ernest Hemingway – The Nick Adams Stories
Ernest Hemingway – In Our Time
Ethan Canin – A Doubter’s Almanac
Eula Biss – On Immunity: An Inoculation
Eula Biss – Notes From No Man’s Land
Garrison Keillor – Lake Wobegon Days
Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl
Gloria Steinem – My Life on the Road
Gwendolyn Brooks – Annie Allen
Gwendolyn Brooks – Maud Martha
Jack Gilbert – Monolithos, Poems 1962 and 1982 (Another Pittsburgh native)
Jane Smiley – A Thousand Acres
Jeffrey Eugenides – The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides – Middlesex
Jim Harrison – Legends of the Fall
Jim Harrison – The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand
John Williams – Stoner
Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections
Kali Vanbaale – The Space Between
Kent Haruf – Plainsong
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse–Five
Langston Hughes – Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes – The Weary Blues
Laura Ingalls Wilder – Little House on the Prairie
Laura Kasischke – Lilies Without
Laura Kasischke – Eden Springs
Linda Gregerson – Magnetic North
Lorna Beers – Prairie Fires
Louise Erdich – The Plague of Doves
Louise Erdich – The Round House
Mardi Jo Link – Bootstrapper
Margaret Walker – Jubilee
Margaret Walker – For My People
Margo Jefferson – Negroland (Born in Chicago)
Margo Jefferson – On Michael Jackson
Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson – Gilead
Mark Twain – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Marlon James – A Brief History of Seven Killings (Professor at Macalester College)
Matt Bell – Cataclysm Baby
Matt Bell – In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods
MFK Fisher – Serve It Forth
MFK Fisher – Consider The Oyster
Nam Le – The Boat (Iowa Writers Workshop grad, read the first story in this collection and you’ll see why I counted it as Midwestern, though Le’s stories are set around the world)
Nelson Algren – The Man with the Golden Arm
Nickolas Butler – Shotgun Lovesongs
Patricia Hampl – The Florist’s Daughter
Rebecca Makkai – The Hundred-Year House
Richard Wright – Native Son
Robert Hayden – Selected Poems by Robert Hayden
Robert Hayden – Collected Prose: Robert Hayden
Ross Gay – Against Which
Ross Gay – Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Roxane Gay – An Untamed State
Sandra Cisneros – The House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros – Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories
Saul Bellow – The Adventures of Augie March
Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio
Sinclair Lewis – Main Street
Sinclair Lewis – Babbitt
Steve Amick – The Lake, The River, and The Other Lake
Stuart Dybek – The Coast of Chicago
Ted Kooser – Sure Signs
Ted Kooser – Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison
Teju Cole – Open City (Born in Kalamazoo and attended K College)
Teju Cole – Every Day is for The Thief
Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie
Theodore Roethke – The Waking
Theodore Roethke – On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose and Craft of Theodore Roethke
Thomas McGuane – Ninety-Two in the Shade
Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison – Beloved
Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose
Willa Cather – My Antonia
Willa Cather – O Pioneers!
William Gass – The Tunnel
William Gass – Middle C
Editor’s note: for selections where the Midwest connection wasn’t obvious based on the author’s birthplace or setting of the book, I asked the author to add a line of explanation. That’s why some books have those, but most do not.
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