Pop Quiz: Ten Famous Authors and their "Other" Careers

June 11, 2021

Each week I set out to research and document ten “fun facts” on a topic loosely based on the two books I’ve reviewed that week.  “Loosely” being the operative word. 

This week I reviewed Tecumseh and the Prophet, by Peter Cozzens, and Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

Cozzen’s book is set in the time between the Revolution and the War of 1812. It explores the lives of two Shawnee brothers who formed a confederacy of Indian nations to try to defy westward expansion of  a young United States into the Old Northwest Territory. 

Meanwhile, in his book Bill Gates tackles the climate crisis like a business problem and ferrets out areas in need of innovations that will help societies move their carbon emissions to zero.

Both of these authors have had significant careers doing something other than writing. Bill Gates, of course, was co-founder and long time CEO of Microsoft, and now runs the Gates Foundation with his soon to be ex-wife Melinda. Peter Cozzens spent more than 30 years as a Foreign Service Officer in the US State Department.

And so we’ve found this week’s topic. Yes, this Fun Fact Friday post focuses on ten famous authors and their “other” careers. And, since it was a hit a few weeks back, this post is once again in the form of a “pop quiz”. I hope you have fun with this, and for you aspiring writers out there, I hope that these ten examples will provide some inspiration to keep on writing.

So, here we go – 

  1. Airline Reservations Agent – For years this American author worked for Eastern Airlines as a reservation agent. In her spare time she wrote, and several of her stories were published. She was fortunate enough to have friends who scraped together a year’s wages and gave them to her as a present with a note saying “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.” At the end of that year she had penned a modern American classic, that was partly autobiographical and based on her childhood in Alabama. She was:

  • Erica Jong

  • Alice Walker

  • Harper Lee

  • Barbara Kingsolver

  • Graham Greene

  • Vladimir Nabokov

  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  • Leon Uris

  • Frank McGuinness

  • Padraic Colum

  • James Joyce

  • Bram Stoker

  • Stephen King

  • Dean Koontz

  • Michael Crichton

  • Dan Brown

  • A.A. Fair

  • Raymond Chandler

  • Dashiell Hammett

  • P.G. Woodhouse

  • Joan Didion

  • Joan Lindsey

  • Joan Hall

  • John Johnston

  • Ann-Marie MacDonald

  • Charlotte Gray

  • Margaret Atwood

  • Alice Munro

  • Keri Hulme

  • Jane Campion

  • Ngaio Marsh

  • Joy Cowley

  • August Wilson

  • Ibram X. Kendi

  • Richard Wright

  • Langston Hughes

  • Armistead Maupin

  • Edmund White

  • James Baldwin

  • Larry Kramer

So there you have it. Scroll down to find the answers. Let me know if you enjoyed this week’s Fun Facts Friday Pop Quiz by leaving a comment below.

Answers below 

1 – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; 

2 – Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita 

3 – Bram Stoker, Dracula 

4 – Stephen King, Carrie 

5 – Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (and the detective is Philip Marlowe)

6 – Joan Lindsey, Picnic at Hanging Rock 

7 – Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale 

8 – Keri Hulme, The Bone People

9 – Langston Hughes, The Ways of White Folks

10 – Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City 

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