Writers from Columbia, Missouri

Simon Barrett (born 1978 or 1979) is an American actor, producer, and screenwriter known for his collaborations with Adam Wingard, including A Horrible Way to Die, V/H/S, V/H/S/2, You're Next, and The Guest. He is associated with the mumblecore movement and has worked with director Joe Swanberg several times.

Philip LaZebnik (born 1953 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American screenwriter and producer. LaZebnik has written screenplays for films including Pocahontas, Mulan, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar, Asterix and the Vikings, The Three Investigators and the Secret of Skeleton Island, The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar II, The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar III: The Mystery of the Snake Crown, The Three Investigators and the Secret of Terror Castle, Emma and Santa Claus and The Ark and the Aardvark. He wrote the book for the musical "Fairy Tale" about Hans Christian Andersen with songs by Stephen Schwartz, and wrote the book and lyrics for "Oktoberfest: the Musical" with music by Harold Faltermeyer. In collaboration with Mads Æbeløe Nielsen he wrote the book for the theatrical musical version of Djævelens lærling (or The Devil's Apprentice), a best-selling Danish fantasy novel of the same name by Kenneth B. Andersen, with songs and music by Madeline Myers.

Ryan W. Ferguson (born October 19, 1984) is an American who spent nearly 10 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of a 2001 murder in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri. At the time of the murder, Ferguson was a 17-year-old high school student.

William Least Heat-Moon (born William Lewis Trogdon August 27, 1939) is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He is the author of several books which chronicle unusual journeys through the United States, including cross-country trips by boat (River Horse, 1999) and, in his best known work (1982's Blue Highways), about his journey in a 1975 Ford Econoline van.

Jake Adelstein (born March 28, 1969) is an American journalist, crime writer, and blogger who has spent most of his career in Japan. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.

Benjamin Blake Minor (October 21, 1818 – August 1, 1905) was an American writer, educator, legal scholar, and fourth President of the University of Missouri, from 1860-1862. Today, he is most known as the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. He also compiled the second edition of the reports of the decisions of George Wythe, published in 1852.

J. T. Rogers is a multiple-award-winning, internationally recognized American playwright who lives in New York. Rogers has written several plays including Oslo, Blood and Gifts, The Overwhelming, White People, and Madagascar.

Clay Shirky (born 1964) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism.

Frances V. Rummell (November 14, 1907 - May 11, 1969) was an educator and columnist who is known posthumously as the author and publisher of the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in the United States.

Gary Leach (born 1957 in Columbia, Missouri) is an American comics writer, translator, art director, production manager, letterer and colorist who has worked for several Disney comics publishers since the 1980s, namely Gladstone Publishing, Gemstone Publishing and IDW Publishing.