It’s the birthday of Ken Kesey (1935-2001), professional hippie and author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), the film version of which (1976) won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing (Screenplay Adapted from Other Material). NB: Kesey himself started out working on the film but left [...]
It’s the birthday of James Alan McPherson (1943-2016), the first black author to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and a member of the first cohort to receive a MacArthur “genius grant.” McPherson was born in Savannah, Georgia. His mother was a maid, and his father became the first black master electrician in the state, [...]
It’s the birthday of British author Roald Dahl, whose beloved children’s books such as James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The BFG (1982), and Matilda (1988) tend to feature children pitted against hostile and malevolent adults. Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales, to Norwegian parents; Dahl grew up bilingual. [...]
(I am reposting last year's post, partly because I am especially fond of it and partly because I don't have time to write about Michael Ondaatje today, the important Canadian author whose birthday it also is.) It’s the birthday of one of science fiction’s most prominent authors, Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), whose first name required me [...]
It’s the birthday of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930, #diedtooyoung), one of the major English authors of the 20th century, and I know what you’re all thinking so just get your minds out of the gutter right now. This is a family show. David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, the son of a coal [...]
It’s the birthday of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), known for his many popular science essays published in Natural History magazine and collected in volumes such as Ever Since Darwin (1977), The Panda’s Thumb (1980), and Bully for Brontosaurus (1991). Gould was also known for his “punctuated equilibrium” theory, which posited that evolutionary change occurs [...]
It’s the birthday of Leo Tolstoy (New Style; 1828-1910), one of the greatest novelists in the world and best known for War and Peace (1865-69) and Anna Karenina (1875-77), widely considered two of the greatest books of all time, which is impressive considering that Anna Karenina is jam-packed with long passages about things like the [...]
It’s the birthday of Alice Sebold (b. 1963), whose novel The Lovely Bones (2002) has sold about 10 million copies and has been called “the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.” Sebold was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where her father taught Spanish at the University [...]
It’s the birthday of children’s book author Paul Fleischman (b. 1952), who won the Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices in 1989, just two years after his father, Sid Fleischman, won the Newbery for The Whipping Boy. Fleischman was born in Monterey, California, to Betty and Sid and raised in Santa Monica. [...]
It’s the first day back to school for children in our area and our household. It’s also the birthday of cartoonist and children’s book author Syd Hoff (1912-2004), best known for his bestselling children’s book Danny and the Dinosaur (1958), in which a boy rides some sort of sauropod dinosaur out of a natural history [...]
It’s the birthday of Russell Baker (1925-2019, #nicelonglife), the celebrated newspaper columnist, humorist, and host of PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre who won one Pulitzer for commentary and another Pulitzer for biography and who later served on the Pulitzer Prize board. (Ah HA.) Baker was born into extreme poverty in Loudoun County, Virginia. When he was five, [...]
It’s the birthday of Jonathan Kellerman (b. 1949), who started out as a psychologist specializing in pediatrics, began writing bestselling crime novels, and eventually left his practice to write full time. He’s especially known for his books featuring a child psychologist, Alex Delaware, who consults for the L.A.P.D. Kellerman was born in New York City [...]