By STEPHEN McGUIRE

Here are a few who drew inspiration from the borough, and put a pen to paper to create some of literature’s shining moments.

"About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the rail road and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is the valley of the ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby.

It doesn’t sound pretty.

But that’s how F. Scott Fitzgerald described the Queens of the 1920’s in The Great Gatsby.

The description paints a picture of what was at the time known as the Corona Ash Dumps.

Some years later the area was cleared to build the site for the 1939 World’s Fair – the area now known as Flushing Meadows- Corona Park.

A pivotal part of the novel takes place in Queens on Northern Boulevard where Daisy’s husband has an affair with Myrtle, the wife of a local garage owner.

Also within the pages of Gatsby, Fitzgerald pays homage to a local landmark.

"The city seen from the Queensborough Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world," Fitzgerald wrote.

In 1943, beat writer Jack Kerouac and his parents moved into a corner apartment at 94-10 134th Street.

While living in Ozone Park, Kerouac penned his first novel, The Town and the City.

The book was inspired by the painful process of coming to terms with his father’s death from stomach cancer while the family was living in Queens.

It was in Ozone Park that Kerouac plotted and poured over maps outlining the journey that would later become his most well-known work On the Road. In 1996 the Historic Landmark Commission recognized the Kerouac apartment as an historically important place.

In Kerouac’s collection, called Book of Blues, the author dedicated a series of poetic rants to the borough he once lived in by calling a section "Richmond Hill Blues."

"The great place. . . the heart, the brain, the focus. . . the no more beyond of the western world."

–Walt Whitman on New York City

Born in 1819, the author of the heralded Leaves of Grass collection of poems was once a school teacher in Jamaica.

Working also as a printer and a journalist, Whitman published several revised and edited versions of Leaves of Grass throughout his life.

On the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park theme, a more recent addition to our Queens library is worth a look—and certainly a laugh.

Andrew Postman begins his first novel, Now I know Everything, with a passionate union under the Unisphere. Unfortunately, having the world on your shoulders can lead to a little performance anxiety.

"We were heading the long way back to my car when we came upon the surreal Unisphere. For reasons unknown, a deserted Parks service truck and ladder stood at the base of the globe. It was simply too come-hither to resist. With sitcom timing Julie and I turned to each other. ‘Let’s do it,’ I said," Postman wrote.

Helen Keller who was blind and deaf from an early age, spent the greater part of her life in Forest Hills and became a prolific writer and speaker.

She gave several readings at the old Forest Hills Theater.

"They tell me the view is loveliest in the morning and the sunset when one sees the skyscrapers rising like fairy palaces, their million windows gleaming in the rosy tinted atmosphere.

Who can deny that the Queensborough Bridge is the work of a creative artist? It never fails to give me a poignant desire to capture the noble cadence of its music."

–From the memoirs of Helen Keller

Divine intervention may seem beyond the realm of Queens but in his novel The Third Miracle, Richard Vetere proves that miracles can happen – in Maspeth.

In Richard Vetere’s The Third Miracle, miracles happen – in Maspeth.

In the novel, a Flushing priest must investigate the miracle, but is hindered by a crisis of confidence which lands him at the former Naked City club on Queens Boulevard.

"The statues gleamed white in the early evening darkness, two spotlights adding to the dramatic effect. Frank stood across the street from the cemetery after parking his car. He recognized the setting from his youth nearly forgotten. He looked at the haunting drama being played out on the hill by the large statues and noticed all the cars driving by on Queens Boulevard, oblivious to the human drama represented. . ."

Vetere’s description of Maspeth is nothing short of miraculous also.

"St. Stanislaus was an old brick grey-stone three story church in the clean, European style neighborhood of Maspeth, Queens. The church stood in the center of the community, on the top of a hill that leveled off to the southwest towards Brooklyn. Surrounding the church were rows of modest two-family homes with steel or wooden fences enclosing their front yards. Behind each home were backyards where, before the rains came, clothes lines spanned kitchen windowsills. The streets were tiny and narrow, paved nearly a century before, when Polish immigrants came to Maspeth to work in the textile factory on Cooper Avenue," wrote Vetere."

The best-selling book Tuesdays with Morrie was penned by former Tribune editor Mitch Albom. who came to the Trib in 1981.

Albom lived in Forest Hills before putting the inspiring tale of his college professor Morrie Schwartz on paper.

Following his time in Queens he went on to write for The Detroit Free Press and became a regular on the cable sports network ESPN.

The best-selling book Tuesdays with Morrie was written by former Trib editor Mitch Albom.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jimmy Breslin lived in Forest Hills for most of his life up until 1982.

For close to thirty years Breslin has covered the borough, using Queens as the setting for numerous columns and novels.

Breslin also made a name for himself as a political candidate when he campaigned for City Council President in 1969.

Out of the ashes described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, came one of the greatest spectacles of the century – the 1939 World’s Fair.

In his book called World’s Fair E.L. Doctorow provides a portrait of the event.

"Even from the elevated station I could see the famous Trylon and Perisphere. They were white in the sun, white spire, white globe they went together, they belonged together as some sort of partnership in my head. I didn’t know what they stood for, it was all very vague in my mind but to see them, after having seen pictures and posters and buttons of them for so long, made me feel incredibly happy. I felt like jumping up and down, I felt myself trembling with joy."

–From World’s Fair by E.L. Doctorow

In 1999, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo took us back to his childhood with the autobiographical story The Blue Spruce. It is a tale of a tree that still stands near his former Holliswood home and has inspired the former Governor throughout his life.

Former Governor Mario Cuomo, recently penned an autobiographical children’s book entitled The Blue Spruce.

At 33 years old, there was still so much for Joe Queen to do.

A first-rate reporter and front-line columnist for Newsday – and a Pulitzer Prize winner – Queen was never afraid to speak for the people of Queens when he saw incompetence, injustice or plain stupidity on the part of the "municipality."

Queen began his career as a fledgling reporter at the Queens Tribune during the 1970s. He moved on to Newsday in the 80s, where in 1987 he began to tirelessly report on the news of Queens neighborhoods. In 1987 his efforts paid off, when he earned a spot as one of Newsday’s front-line columnists. In "Queens’ Queens" Joe gave us the lowdown on activities throughout the borough. Through the column, he made us aware of, made us angry enough to react to, municipal snafus, and he made us laugh – at ourselves.

Queen later shared a Pulitzer Prize for a joint-effort exposé of the Port Authority. He was one of the few people in the media who, by the mere mention of his name, could make Port Authority and airline industry officials cringe.

Queen shared his talents with us for just about nine years. He passed away on Christmas Day 1996 after losing a battle with cancer. He left us more enriched, more knowledgeable, and with a greater spirit to fight for our neighborhoods.