John Ulrich Giesy was an American physician, novelist and author. He was one of the early writers in the Sword and Planet genre, with his Jason Croft series. He collaborated with Junius B. Smith on many of his stories.
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
John Vaillant is an American-Canadian writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside. He has written both non-fiction and fiction books.
John William Van Druten was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
John Van Seters (May 2, 1935 – April 9, 2025) was a Canadian scholar of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the Ancient Near East. He was a University Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, and James A. Gray Professor of Biblical Literature at UNC. He took his PhD at Yale University in Near Eastern Studies (1965) and a Th.D. h.c. from the University of Lausanne (1999). His honours and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH fellowship, an ACLS Fellowship, and research fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and National Research Foundation of South Africa. His many publications include The Hyksos: A New Investigation (1966); Abraham in History and Tradition (1975); In Search of History (1983, for which he won the James H. Breasted Prize and the American Academy of Religion book award); The Edited Bible (2006); and The Biblical Saga of King David (2009).
Sir John Vanbrugh was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was knighted in 1714.
John Vance Cheney was an American poet, essayist and librarian. Educated in Geneseo, New York, Cheney practiced law briefly in Woodstock, Vermont and New York City before moving to California with his first wife Abigail Perkins Vance Cheney, teaching music, lecturing, and working as a postal clerk. In 1887 he assumed the position of librarian of the Free Public Library of San Francisco, where he oversaw the openings of the system's first branch libraries and hosted the first west coast conference of the American Library Association in 1891. In 1894 he moved to Chicago, where he served as librarian of the Newberry Library. In 1909 he retired and moved to San Diego with his second wife, Sara Barker Chamberlain.
John P. Verdon is an American novelist. In 2010, Crown/Random House published his first mystery thriller, Think of a Number, the debut novel in the Dave Gurney detective series.
