Włodzimierz Spasowicz or Vladimir Spasovich (1829–1906) was a Polish-Russian lawyer often acclaimed as the most brilliant defense attorney of Imperial Russia.

Włodzimierz Wolski was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and librettist. He is best known as the author of the libretto to Stanisław Moniuszko's opera Halka.

Wojciech Dębołęcki, also spelled Wojciech Dembołęcki, was a Polish Franciscan friar, writer and composer. His musical works are among the first to use basso continuo. In his poetry, he praised the Sarmatism culture. He was the chaplain of one of the best military units of his times, irregular unit of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth light cavalry - Lisowczycy, fighting on battlefields from Picardy to the banks of the White Sea. Dębołęcki has chronicled their history in his Przewagi elearów polskich, or The victories of Polish cavalry (1623).

Wojciech Kętrzyński, was a Polish historian and the director of the Ossolineum Library in Lemberg, then the capital of Galicia, Austrian Empire. He focused on Polish history at a time when Poland was partitioned between foreign powers. He opposed the idea of Germanization and assisted in the January Uprising for Poland's cause. In 1861 he legally changed his name and became a Polish national.

Wojciech Żukrowski was a Polish prosaist, poet, reporter, essayist and literary critic.

Charles Wolcott Balestier was a promising American writer, editor, and publisher who died young, and is now remembered primarily for his connection to Rudyard Kipling. His sister Carrie Balestier married Kipling in 1891.

Gustav Woldemar Freiherr von Biedermann was a jurist, literary historian, and Goethe researcher.

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka Hon. FRSL, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.

Karl Wolf Biermann is a German singer-songwriter, poet, and former East German dissident. He is perhaps best known for the 1968 song "Ermutigung" and his expatriation from East Germany in 1976.

Wolf Haas is an Austrian writer. He is most widely known for his crime fiction novels featuring detective Simon Brenner, four of which were made into films. He has won several prizes for his works, including the German prize for crime fiction.