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 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 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 British author G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874-1936), who wrote everything from poetry to highly regarded literary criticism to works of historical theology but who is best known for his Father Brown mysteries. Chesterton was born in London, England, and had a happy childhood. Even though he was British. And became a [...]
It’s the birthday of two Russians who both won the Nobel Prize in Literature but whose lives in the Soviet Union followed very different trajectories: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905-1984), a card-carrying Communist (seriously: he joined the Communist Party in 1932 and he meant it so I bet he had a card in his wallet saying [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the best-selling children’s book authors of all time, Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952), who wrote The Runaway Bunny (1942), Goodnight Moon (1947), and over 100 other books in her very short lifetime. Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York, to wealthy but emotionally and/or physically absent parents. Her mother was [...]
It’s the birthday of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), now revered as a great poet after being ditched by the Romantics for the unRomanticness of his style and his tendency to be a teensy bit cruel, although elegantly so. Pope was born in London, England, to newly Catholic parents who soon moved the family to Binfield, [...]
It’s the birthday of Irene Hunt (1907-2001), author of historical novels and best known for her Newbery Honor book, Across Five Aprils (1964), about a boy growing up during the Civil War. Hunt was 57 when this novel, her first, was published. Hunt was born in Pontiac, Illinois. Her father died of typhoid fever when [...]
It’s the birthday of two authors who have each written a ton of books for children and young adults: Eloise Greenfield (1929) and Gary Paulsen (1939). Greenfield was born in Parmele, North Carolina, and raised in Washington, D.C., where her family moved because of the Great Depression. She has warm memories of growing up in [...]
It’s the birthday of major poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), whose poetry changed considerably throughout her lifetime in both content and style, moving away from “the restrained and formal” to more personal poems in free verse. Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was Arnold Rice Rich, the chairman of pathology at The Johns Hopkins [...]