The following are American authors who have appeared on the cover of TIME magazine:

Jonathan Franzen

2010

Mark Twain

2008

Stephen King

2000

Toni Morrison

1998

Tom Wolfe

1998

Michael Crichton

1995

Scott F. Turow

1990

Neil Simon

1986

Garrison Keillor

1985

Erma Bombeck

1984

John Updike

1982

John Irving

1981

Carl Sagan

1980

Mario Puzo

1978

Marabel Morgan

1977

Alex Haley

1977

Gore Vidal

1976

Norman Mailer

1973

Richard Bach

1972

Robert Lowell

1967

Bennett Cerf

1966

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

1965

William Faulkner

1964

John Cheever

1964

James Baldwin

1963

Tennessee Williams

1962

J. D. Salinger

1961

James Cozzens

1957

Herman Wouk

1955

Ernest Hemingway

1954

David Riesman

1954

Thornton Wilder

1953

Mortimer J. Adler

1952

James Thurber

1951

Robert Frost

1950

T. S. Eliot

1950

John Phillips Marquand

1949

Douglas Freeman

1948

Reinhold Niebuhr

1948

Craig Rice

1946

Sinclair Lewis

1945

Kenneth Roberts

1940

Carl Sandburg

1939

George S. Kaufman

1939

Lewis Mumford

1938

John Dos Passos

1936

Kathleen Norris

1935

Upton Sinclair

1934

Maxwell Anderson

1934

Gertrude Stein

1933

Robinson Jeffers

1932

Eugene O’Neill

1931

Willa S. Cather

1931

Harry Emerson Fosdick

1930

Arthur Brisbane

1926

Booth Tarkington

1925

Amy Lowell

1925

Samuel George Blythe

1923