It’s the birthday of poet, essayist, and memoirist Mary Karr (b. 1955), probably most famous for her three bestselling memoirs, The Liars’ Club (1995), Cherry (2001), and Lit (2009). Karr was born in Groves, Texas, and there she had a hair-raising childhood marked by neglect, alcoholic parents, and a mentally unstable mother who once tried [...]
It’s the birthday of Ernest James Gaines (b. 1933), whose novels are set in a fictional plantation area in rural Louisiana and who is best known for the highly-acclaimed novels The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) and A Lesson Before Dying (1993). (NB: This post contains no description of disembowelment and no mention whatsoever [...]
It’s the birthday of Yukio Mishima (b. 1925-1970), who is possibly the most important Japanese novelist of his century and who died in a far more dramatic way than any of us can hope to achieve. Seriously. Don’t even try. Mishima was born Hiraoka Kimitake in Tokyo to a government official and his wife, but [...]
It’s the birthday of Diana Gabaldon (b. 1952), one of today’s most popular authors in the historical fiction-science fiction-fantasy-adventure-mystery-romance (HFSFFAMR) genre and whose Outlander novels have sold more than 28 million copies. Gabaldon (known as “Herself” to her fans at Comic Con) was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, and grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, telling stories [...]
It’s the birthday of the early 20th century poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), whose philosophy can be summed up as pro-nature, anti-humanity, resonating (however unintentionally) with a later 20th century thinker who said, “People. They’re the worst” (Jerry Seinfeld). Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and received a crazy-good education in classics and the Bible, due [...]
It’s the birthday of Judith Krantz (b. 1927 or 1928, sources disagree), whose salacious romance novels based on S&S (sex and shopping) have sold a respectable 80-plus million copies in 50-plus languages, and whose best-known titles probably include Scruples (1978) and Princess Daisy (1980). You will not find her next to Jane Austen or George [...]
It’s the birthday of Victorian author Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), whose novel The Moonstone (1868) is considered by some to be the greatest English detective story ever written and whose popularity in his day was exceeded only by that of Charles Dickens. If you google Collins’ image, you will see that he has the high, prominent, [...]
It’s the birthday of Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), a member of the Harlem Renaissance who is best known today for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and the good news is that if you have always wanted to read a description of what untreated rabies does to a human being, then look no [...]
It’s the birthday of comedian and bestselling author Andy Borowitz (b. 1958), who has been called one of the funniest people in America and who wrote an article officially acknowledged as one of the funniest pieces ever published in the New Yorker, “Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst” (Nov. 16, 1998). Borowitz was born and raised [...]
It’s the birthday of poet Anne Stevenson (b. 1933), about whose distinctive style it has been said, “Reading her, one is seldom if ever reminded of any other poets” (X. J. Kennedy). Stevenson was born in Cambridge, England, but mostly grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Haven, Connecticut, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, depending on where [...]
It’s the birthday of critically acclaimed novelist and short story author Leonard Michaels (1933-2003), an author who evidently ranks right up there with the greatest writers you’ve never heard of. (I think. I’d never heard of him.) Michaels is known for writing about ordinary characters in bizarre and extreme situations and has been compared to [...]
It’s the birthday of Junot Diaz (b. 1968), best known for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), which won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and who has been embroiled in the #MeToo movement this past year amid allegations of sexual harassment. Diaz was born in the [...]