3 Famous Writers Born in Long Branch, New Jersey

Many are familiar with Long Branch's connection to music history: the house Bruce Springsteen wrote "Born to Run" in was famously a bungalow on West End Court.

What's less known is the city's ties with some of America's most well-known and influential writers. While only one spent their entire childhood in Long Branch, all three were born in the city and spent formative time there.

Dorothy Parker

Writer Dorothy Parker was born in Long Branch on Aug. 22 1893. Her family spent summers in the city, which was a busy resort town that brought in visitors from Manhattan. She joked that her family returned to New York City immediately after Labor Day so she would be considered a true New Yorker.

READ MORE: Asbury Park Insults Got Famous Writer Fired

Parker was known for her biting wit, and not just in taking shots at her birth state. Her most famous one-liners as: "I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid"; "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses"; and "Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone." Zing.

A plaque commemorating Parker's birthplace was erected in the 2005 and the site added to the Friends of Libraries U.S.A.'s Literary Landmarks register.

Norman Mailer

Like Parker, Norman Mailer is typically considered a New York writer but he has his origins in Long Branch.

Mailer was born in the city in 1923. His family operated and later owned the beachfront Scarboro Hotel, according to the Asbury Park Press.

He was known for his narrative nonfiction as well as his sweeping novels and went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award.

A plaque commemorating Mailer's ties to Long Branch was dedicate in 2018.

(Side note: Mailer's epic World War II novel The Naked and the Dead is American canon-worthy, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.)

Robert Pinsky

Storied poet Robert Pinsky was not only born in Long Branch, he grew up there and graduated from Long Branch High School before attending Rutgers. Pinsky would become the first person to serve three terms as poet laureate and would also be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Springsteen has called Pinsky, "truly the voice of the Jersey Shore."

Pinsky detailed the city's influence on him in his 2022 memoir Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet

"My feelings about the town are as confused as can be. My bedeviled patriotism, my need for the lofty outcast art of poetry, my C-student's distrust of worldly reqards and punishments, the inward voice that spurs me to bring together disparate times, place and things, that attraction to a mishmosh. All began in Long Branch," Pinsky wrote in the prologue to the book.

The memoir is a must-read, not only for fans of Pinsky's poetry but for anyone with an interest in the history of the city. It also opens with a funny anecdote about Rep. Frank Pallone's family and his brother's failed mayoral campaign that this former reporter and observer of Monmouth County politics greatly appreciated.