NB: This post was first published last year. Anyone who survives the Gulag to write brilliantly and courageously about it deserves a re-post. 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 the kind of [...]
It’s the birthday of British children’s book author Mary (Pearson) Norton (1903-1992, #nicelonglife), best known for her series on the Borrowers, a race of tiny people six inches tall who live secretly alongside humans and “borrow” from them. The original book, The Borrowers (1952), won England’s Carnegie Medal, which recognizes outstanding books for children, and [...]
It’s the birthday of John Milton (1608-1674), who, while not often chosen as the person from history you’d most like to have dinner with, is hailed as the most important writer in the English language after Barbara Cartland. (Just kidding. Shakespeare. You knew that.) Milton was born in London to a father who’d been kicked [...]
NB: This is an update of last year's post, although really more of a backdate...you'll see what I mean. As far as I know, the Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest has not taken place yet this year. It’s the birthday of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918, #diedtooyoung), best known for a single [...]
It’s the birthday of Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), often hailed as one of the greatest woman Victorian poets—they used to divide poets into man poets and woman poets—but more frequently hailed today as one of the great Victorian poets, period. (Back in the man poet/woman poet days, it used to be a thing to argue over [...]
Yesterday was the birthday of Rex Stout (1886-1975, #nicelonglife), author of the Nero Wolfe detective novels. The 46 novels (and numerous novellas) have sold 45 million copies in 22 languages. (Yes. I’m one day off, addled by all the turkey and stuffing I’ve ingested. Sue me.) Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana, but grew up [...]
It’s the birthday of Frederik Pohl (1919-2013, #nicelonglife), award-winning science fiction author whose work was often highly political and anti-utopian. One of his novels alone, Gateway (1977), won Hugo, Locus, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, and his 1979 novel Jem: The Making of a Utopia won the only National Book Award for Science [...]
It’s the birthday of Helen Hooven Santmyer (1895-1986), who was 88 years old when her novel …And Ladies of the Club hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The novel had been published quietly two years prior to that by Ohio State University Press. Then a woman overheard a librarian say it [...]
It’s the birthday of the first woman—and the first Swede—to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909), Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940). Lagerlöf was born and raised in Mårbacka, a mansion located on an estate in Värmland, Sweden. (For crying out loud. Who has time for all these diacritics?) She grew up in a large family, and [...]
It’s the 80th birthday of Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), Canada’s most celebrated author and one of the most revered living authors on the planet. (I checked.) Atwood has written poetry, short stories, critical studies, children’s books, screenplays, and probably more than a few brilliant grocery lists but is best known for her novels, particularly The [...]
NB: Today's post is a re-post from last year because reasons, and those reasons are deadlines, doctor's appointments, and birthday planning. Plus this author seems to bear repeating. It’s the birthday of the woman who wrote: “On the outskirts of a tiny little town was a neglected garden. In the garden stood an old [...]
It’s the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (1922-2007), author of Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), considered by many to be one of the greatest English language novels of all time. Slaughterhouse-Five—part autobiography, part historical fiction, part science fiction, and (according to Salman Rushdie) “a great realist novel”—is based on Vonnegut’s experience of the bombing of Dresden as a [...]