Not everyone here at the Library knows a lot about college basketball. (For some of us, the terminology alone is enough to make eyes glaze over: berths, bids, Boilermakers, and baby hooks — whaaa?)
But we do know quite a bit about books.
This year, we’re offering a basketball bracket for bibliophiles — a fun way for book lovers to get into the madness that is March. This chart, based on the NCAA bracket for the men’s basketball tournament, lists books and authors that have connections (see below) to the very same teams that made it into this year’s Big Dance.
Print the PDF, pick your favorites, and let the books battle it out. Do you think Gilead is a better read than Gone Girl? We’ll see if your favorite book’s got game.
EAST REGION
Duke University: Anne Tyler — who won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1989 novel, Breathing Lessons — is an alum.
North Dakota State: Humayun Ahmed’s debut novel is Nondito Noroke (In Blissful Hell). Ahmed earned his Ph.D. here.
Virginia Commonwealth University: Tom Wolfe, who was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, wrote The Right Stuff.
University of Central Florida: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, just outside Orlando.
Mississippi State University: John Grisham, author of The Firm, got an accounting degree here.
Liberty University: The subject of J. Lee Greene’s Time’s Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer’s Life and Poetry raised her family in Lynchburg, Virginia. Spencer, a Harlem Renaissance poet, activist, and librarian, was the first African American to have her poetry included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry.
Virginia Tech: Author Alex Sánchez is an alum. His first novel, Rainbow Boys, which discusses LGBTQ and young adult issues, was selected by the American Library Association (ALA) as a 2002 Best Book for Young Adults.
Saint Louis University: Poet Maya Angelou, who wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and dozens of other works, was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
University of Maryland: Carl Bernstein was a reporter for the school’s independent student newspaper, The Diamondback, before he dropped out of college. He and Bob Woodward broke the Watergate scandal and wrote All the President’s Men.
Belmont University: Ann Patchett, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Bel Canto, lives in Nashville, home to the Belmont Bruins.
Louisiana State University: Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, is an alum. She also studied Tibetan Buddhism.
Yale University: Roxane Gay, an author and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, recently became a visiting professor here. She dropped out of Yale as an undergrad.
University of Louisville: Hunter S. Thompson, journalist and author of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, was born in Louisville.
University of Minnesota: Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, is an alum.
Michigan State University: Alum Jim Harrison wrote poetry, essays, novels, and novellas, including his most famous, Legends of the Fall.
Bradley University: The Feminine Mystique author Betty Friedan was born in Peoria, Illinois, home to the Bradley Braves.
WEST REGION
Gonzaga University: Terry Davis, the author of 1979’s Vision Quest, was born and raised in Spokane, Washington.
Fairleigh Dickinson University: Alum Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist later wrote When Character Was King, an in-depth look at the former president.
Syracuse University: What I Lived For author Joyce Carol Oates was valedictorian of her graduating class here.
Baylor University: Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs, graduated from Baylor and began his writing career as a crime reporter for the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Marquette University: Graphic novelist Craig Thompson said in an interview, “The whole emotional inspiration for (Blankets) was about who I had left behind when I left Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” Thompson lived in Milwaukee, home to Marquette, in his early 20s.
Murray State University: Jude Deveraux, who wrote A Knight in Shining Armor, went to school here.
Florida State University: Michael Shaara wrote The Killer Angels, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Shaara taught here.
University of Vermont: The Shipping News author Annie Proulx graduated from here.
University at Buffalo: Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Reform, is an alum.
Arizona State University: Legally Blonde author Amanda Brown is a Sun Devil.
Texas Tech University: Rachel Caine, author of The Morganville Vampires series, is an alum.
Northern Kentucky University: David Mack, creator of the Kabuki comic book series, went to school here.
University of Nevada: The Ox-Bow Incident writer Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s father served as president of the university, and the younger Clark went to school here.
University of Florida: Hoot is alum Carl Hiaasen’s first foray into young adult literature.
University of Michigan: Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, is an alum.
University of Montana: A River Runs Through It author Norman Maclean and his family lived in Missoula, the home of the University of Montana, and the book is set in and around the town.
SOUTH REGION
University of Virginia: Rita Dove is an English professor here and a former U.S. poet laureate. Sonata Mulattica is a collection Dove’s poems.
Gardner-Webb University: Bitter in the Mouth is a 2010 novel by Vietnamese American author Monique Truong. Much of the story is set in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, where the university is located.
University of Mississippi: William Faulkner, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a Nobel Prize, went to school here. The Sound and the Fury is often considered among the greatest American novels.
University of Oklahoma: Ralph Ellison was born in nearby Oklahoma City. He won the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction for Invisible Man.
University of Wisconsin-Madison: Stephen E. Ambrose, historian and author, graduated from here and chronicled the lives of World War II soldiers in Band of Brothers.
University of Oregon: Ken Kesey studied journalism and communication here. He graduated in 1957 and wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest a few years later.
Kansas State University: The Weary Blues is a book of poetry by Langston Hughes, who spent much of his childhood in Topeka, Kansas — an hour outside Manhattan, the home of K-State.
UC Irvine: Michael Chabon got his M.F.A. in creative writing here. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won Chabon the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Villanova University: Little Women author Louisa May Alcott was born in nearby Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Saint Mary’s College: Alum Robert Hass is a former U.S. poet laureate. His collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 won him a Pulitzer Prize.
Purdue University: Booth Tarkington, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Adams, went to school here.
Old Dominion University: Charlotte Zolotow, author of Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, is a native of Norfolk, Virginia, the home of Old Dominion.
University of Cincinnati: Beloved, Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is set on the outskirts of Cincinnati.
University of Iowa: Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, earned multiple degrees here.
University of Tennessee: Alex Haley, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family, was an adjunct faculty member in the university’s College of Communication.
Colgate University: 60 Minutes broadcaster Andy Rooney attended Colgate.
MIDWEST REGION
University of North Carolina: Jenny Han, author of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series, went to school here.
Iona College: Jane Yolen’s historical fiction novel The Devil’s Arithmetic begins in New Rochelle, New York, Iona’s home.
Utah State University: The authors of Teaching Your Children Values, Linda and Richard Eyre, met here.
University of Washington: Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson got her master’s and doctorate here.
Auburn University: Alum Anne Rivers Siddons wrote The House Next Door, a horror novel Stephen King called one of the best of the 20th century.
New Mexico State University: Rose Marie Pangborn, a pioneer in the field of sensory analysis of food, earned her bachelor’s here.
University of Kansas: Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn is an alum.
Northeastern University: Pulitzer Prize winner and Fulbright scholar Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, home of the Huskies.
Iowa State University: Robert James Waller Jr., author of The Bridges of Madison County, was born in nearby Charles City, Iowa, and grew up in Rockford.
Ohio State University: Virginia Hamilton wrote The House of Dies Drear, a children’s mystery novel. She went to school here and won a National Book Award and a Newbery Medal.
University of Houston: The Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold attended graduate school here.
Georgia State University: An American Marriage author Tayari Jones was born in Atlanta.
Wofford College: Nicholas Sparks, a former resident of nearby Simpsonville, South Carolina, was in pharmaceutical sales when he wrote The Notebook.
Seton Hall University: The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Pastoral was set in nearby Newark, New Jersey, where author Philip Roth was born.
University of Kentucky: Elizabeth Gould Davis was a librarian who wrote the feminist book The First Sex. She got her master’s degree here.
Abilene Christian University: Katherine Anne Porter, who was born in nearby Indian Creek, Texas, won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter.