It’s the birthday of Gail Godwin (b. 1937), three of whose thirteen novels have been finalists for the National Book Award. She is known for examining the roles of women in society and family and has drawn heavily on her own life when writing about relationships and religious experience. Godwin was born in Birmingham, Alabama. [...]
It’s the birthday of Dutch author Maria Dermoût (1888-1962), who did not publish until her 60s and then became one of the great authors of Dutch and Dutch-Indies literature. Dermoût was born in Pekalongan, Java, then part of the Dutch East Indies, and raised on a sugar plantation there. She studied in the Netherlands and [...]
It’s the birthday of author John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941), one of the most extraordinary, celebrated, and important authors writing about black men in America. Born in Washington, D.C., Wideman was raised in Homewood, a section of Pittsburgh purportedly founded by a former slave, and then Shadyside. He was valedictorian of his high school class [...]
It’s the birthday of author and scholar Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957), best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Sayers was born at Oxford in Oxfordshire, England, the daughter of an Anglican rector. (Rector? Damn near killed her. I’m sorry. I need to stop doing that. That is the last time. Very probably.) She was [...]
It’s the birthday of two 19th century writers best known today for their children’s books: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), known for The Water-Babies (1863), and Johanna (Heusser) Spyri (1827-1901), known for Heidi (1881). If you google them, you will find formidably Victorian images, Kingsley sporting those disturbing long sideburns and Spyri wearing a high ruffled collar [...]
It’s the birthday of acclaimed author William Styron (1925-2006), whose award-winning novels often stirred controversy and who is probably best known for his final novel, Sophie’s Choice (1979). Styron was born in Newport News, Virginia, an only child; his mother suffered from metastatic breast cancer for years before dying when Styron was 14. As his [...]
It’s the birthday of mystery writer Sara Paretsky (b. 1947), who in 1982 revolutionized the genre by publishing Indemnity Only, a mystery featuring strong female detective V.I. Warshawski. (This was evidently an idea whose time had come: Sue Grafton published her first mystery featuring female detective Kinsey Millhone that same year.) Paretsky has written 19 [...]
It’s the birthday of novelist and poet Louise Erdrich (b. 1954), best known for her fiction about the Ojibwe Indians. Erdrich herself is one-quarter Ojibwe through her mother; her father was German-American. Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, but grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. She was a member of the first class of [...]
It’s the birthday of a number of interesting poets and authors, one of whom is Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), considered Russia’s greatest poet. Pushkin had a turbulent political and personal life, living in exile for several years because of his political views, and his masterpiece, Evgeny Onegin (1833), features a character who dies in a duel—foreshadowing [...]
It’s the birthday of bestselling author Rick Riordan (b. 1964), known for his ridiculously popular Percy Jackson middle grade series that weaves Greek mythology into contemporary settings. It’s also the birthday of a number of other illustrious authors, including Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969); children’s book author Richard Scarry (1919-1994); Christy Brown (1932-1981); Margaret Drabble (b. 1939); [...]
It’s the birthday of Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007), a British-born author who late in life became one of Australia’s most celebrated fiction writers, and whose step-daughter, Susan Swingler, eventually wrote a memoir exposing the elaborate web of lies that Jolley and her husband perpetrated about their family. Jolley was born Monica Elizabeth Knight in Birmingham, England, [...]
It’s the birthday of Australian author Colleen McCullough (1937-2015), who started writing novels to supplement her income as a neurophysiological research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine and whose second novel, The Thorn Birds (1977), landed her a $1.9 million advance and went on to sell more than 30 million copies. So I guess [...]