Throughout Playboy’s 67-year publication run in the United States, there have always been those who have claimed that they read the magazine solely for the articles. The nudity, the claim suggests, was just a casual, added bonus. But these people actually have evidence to back up that statement, and that evidence comes in the form of a list of the many acclaimed writers whose bylines could be found in Hugh Hefner’s magazine.
“The magazine attracted geniuses,” James Petersen, who used to write the Playboy Advisor column, told Chicago Stories.
Playboy published important interviews with famous actors, musicians, authors, athletes, and politicians. Everyone from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, and Walter Cronkite to countless popular celebrities such as the Beatles, Grace Kelly, Tom Hanks, David Bowie, and many more sat down with Playboy. At a time when print media still flourished, Hefner invested in the quality of his magazine.
“Playboy was in many ways, a great work of craftsmanship. He cut no corners, spared no expense. The magazine itself, physically, was the best quality photography and printing that you could get at the time. Everything about that place was first class,” said Laurence Gonzales, a former editor at Playboy.
Barbara Nellis, another former editor, told Chicago Stories that she worked with a lot of talented people. She said while some writers showed up fully formed, others were able to hone their craft at the magazine, and that the environment at Playboy was such that it allowed good writers to flourish.
“It became kind of a joke in a way, I have to say, out in the world where people said, ‘It’s great writers and people with no clothes on,’” Nellis said. “I found that to be, in a way, totally charming.”
Plenty of familiar names appeared in the magazine as the authors of articles and short stories. One such name might not typically be synonymous with adult writing: Shel Silverstein, who wrote poems and drew cartoons for the magazine.
“Shel Silverstein came to work at Playboy and drew little, funny cartoons. He did travel articles in the form of cartoons, and Hef sent him to Europe and told Shel Silverstein, ‘Go have fun. The work will follow,’” Petersen said.
Below are just some of the other writers whose works appeared in Playboy.
Margaret Atwood
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood of The Handmaid’s Tale fame wrote a short story for the magazine called “The Bog Man.”
James Baldwin
James Baldwin, the writer and civil rights activist, penned several essays for Playboy, one of which, called “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” offered a critique of American masculinity.
Ray Bradbury
Bradbury’s famous dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, was also published in serial form across three issues of Playboy in 1954. He contributed several pieces for the magazine.
Roald Dahl
The British children’s author of Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and others had four short stories with a decidedly more adult point of view published in Playboy in the 1960s and ’70s. They were later published in his Switch Bait collection.
Jack Kerouac
Novelist and poet Jack Keroauc, famous for his novel On the Road, wrote a 1959 article for Playboy entitled, “Origins of the Beat Generation.”
Stephen King
The famously prolific “King of Horror” wrote a short story for the magazine in 1983 called “Word Processor of the Gods.” He also wrote five others that were published in Playboy throughout the years.
Ursula Le Guin
The acclaimed science-fiction author’s “Nine Lives” appeared in a 1969 edition of Playboy. Le Guin later said the editors at the time encouraged her to use an initial in her byline, as they didn’t believe their readers would want to read something by a female author.
Gabriel García Márquez
The Colombian writer of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which earned him a Nobel Prize, wrote a short story for Playboy in 1968 called “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.”
Vladimir Nabokov
Several works of the Russian-born author of Lolita were published in the magazine.
Joyce Carol Oates
The famous writer’s story “Saul Bird Says: Relate! Communicate! Liberate!” was first published in a 1970 edition of Playboy.
John Steinbeck
The author of Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden, who won both Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, had short stories published in Playboy.
Kurt Vonnegut
The author of Slaughterhouse-Five wrote a short story called “Welcome to the Monkey House,” which was later also the title of his short-story collection.
David Foster Wallace
In 1988, the Infinite Jest author wrote a short story called “Late Night” (later retitled “My Appearance”),which was his first story published in a major magazine.
Related
