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 [...]
(Please note: this post originally ran on December 27, 2017.) It’s the birthday of one of the rock stars of astronomy, Johannes Kepler, born in 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Wuerttemberg, in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality. You may know him from such hits as Kepler’s First Two Laws of Planetary Motion (Astronomia [...]
It’s the birthday of Mary Higgins Clark (b. 1927), whose more than 50 books have sold more than 100 million copies in the U.S. alone and who is 91 years old today and still writing. Clark was born in the Bronx in New York City and lost her father at a young age; her mother [...]
It’s the birthday of Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954), best known for her coming-of-age novel, The House on Mango Street (1983), about a Latina girl growing up in Chicago. The novel is frequently assigned in schools and universities and has sold more than six million copies in twenty-some languages. Cisneros was born in Chicago to a [...]
It’s the birthday of Paul Harding (b. 1967), whose debut novel Tinkers ended up winning the Pulitzer in 2010 after lots of early rejection by publishers and editors who felt the novel was too “quiet,” and who has been far too gracious to say “neener-neener” to any of these publishers and editors since his great [...]
It’s the birthday of British-born, Texas-living author and editor Michael Moorcock (b. 1939), known for his science fiction and fantasy works—particularly the Elric of Melniboné stories—and for his huge influence on the New Wave movement in science fiction. Moorcock was born in Mitcham, Surrey, England. His father left the family when he was four because [...]
It’s the birthday of novelist and literary critic Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), who was one of the greatest influences on literature in the first half or so of the 20th century. Best known for his masterpiece The Good Solider (1915), Ford’s work brought together the likes of Henry James, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, [...]
It’s the birthday of short story writer Amy Hempel (b. 1951), known and lauded by critics and writers and creative writing students and blah-de-blah-de-blah everywhere for well-honed stories of the minimalist school (think Raymond Carver). (Sorry. It’s Friday. Amy Hempel is actually great.) Hempel was born in Chicago and grew up in Denver. She was [...]
It’s the birthday of the father of Appalachian literature, John Ehle (1925-2018,#nicelonglife), who wrote great epic novels set in the Appalachian Mountains and one of whose fans was Harper Lee. She called Ehle “our foremost writer of historical fiction.” Ehle was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and grew up in West Asheville, the oldest son [...]
It’s the birthday of French realist novelist Gustav Flaubert (1821-1880), whose novel Madame Bovary (1857) was so realistic it landed Flaubert in court on charges of immorality. Flaubert was born in Rouen, France, to a father who was a chief surgeon at a hospital and a mother who was a doctor’s daughter. Coming as he [...]
It’s the birthday of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008, #nicelonglifeinspiteofallthattimeinsovietprisoncamps), whose works of fiction and nonfiction brought international attention to conditions in the camps under Stalin, and no, we don’t mean summer camp with horseback riding and lanyard making. Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk in southwestern Russia, six months after his father was killed in a hunting [...]
It’s the birthday of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, #diedtooyoung), whose poetry broke all sorts of rules while expressing bold and original ideas, and who is beloved by college students everywhere for the fact that nearly all (but not quite) of her poems can be sung to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Dickinson [...]