Is the Pen Name Mightier Than the Sword?

That's the question that the Washington Post recently asked. Who uses pseudonyms and why?

From the piece...

"The transparent pseudonym is very modern," says Carmela Ciuraru, a Brooklyn-based author and editor whose book "Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms" comes out next year. "It's getting to have it both ways: exploiting the popularity and safety of your own established brand while using the protective cloak of a pen name. . . . It's an easy way to show off how versatile they are as a performer. . . . If a critic bashes them for taking on a different genre or prose style, they've always got their own wildly successful, established name to fall back on."

Vampire maven Anne Rice wrote erotica as A.N. Roquelaure in the '80s to avoid confusing readers and scandalizing her father. The ruse didn't last long, and Rice didn't try to keep it a secret.

"It can be very liberating to step away from your body of work, but very quickly I embraced all of it under name of Anne Rice," she says from her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Using an open pseudonym "strikes me as a sophisticated way to brand and introduce a particular type of work. The name is almost part of the title of the book, a part of the brand, signaling that the author's writing in a slightly different style and voice."