It’s the birthday of *yet another* playwright, Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006), who lived longer than Oscar Wilde but not nearly as long as Arthur Miller, and who is best known for her play The Heidi Chronicles (1988), which won the Pulitzer, the New York Critics’ Circle Award, and the Tony for Best Play—the first solo female [...]
It’s the birthday of writer and horse lover Jane Smiley (b. 1949), whose 1991 novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer and who has sometimes been called “America’s greatest living novelist.” (Discuss.) Smiley was born in Los Angeles but moved in infancy to St. Louis, Missouri; her father left early on and she never saw [...]
Today is the birthday of William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), one of those people who thought he could be both a successful doctor and a brilliant poet and writer, and who turned out to be right. Among his accomplishments were becoming chief of pediatrics at a general hospital in Paterson, New Jersey, winning the National Book [...]
Today is the birthday of poet Mary Oliver (b. 1935), whose poetry usually focuses on the natural world and who has been called one of America’s finest poets (and best-selling poets). Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, a few miles southeast of Cleveland. She had a deeply unhappy childhood (abusive father, neglectful mother), and [...]
It’s quite possibly the birthday of Jennifer Egan (b. 1962—sources vary as to whether she was born on the 6th or 7th), whose 2010 novel, A Visit from the Good Squad, won the Pulitzer, and who may be the greatest living writer ever to receive a marriage proposal from Steve Jobs. Egan was born in [...]
It’s the birthday of William Saroyan (1908-1981), who against crazy odds launched his literary career during the Great Depression with a series of short stories that became a bestselling collection, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories (1934), and who always wrote and lived with zest in spite of whatever hardships [...]
It’s the birthday of poet Rita Dove (b. 1952), who in 1993 at age 40 became the youngest person ever to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, and the first African American as well (if you don’t count Gwendolyn Brooks, who was Consultant in Poetry before they added the Laureate part). Dove was born in Akron, [...]
It’s the birthday of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953), best known for her Pulitzer-winning novel The Yearling (1938), about a boy in backwoods Florida who adopts a fawn, and for chronicling the lives of rural Floridians in the Cross Creek/Florida scrub region. Rawlings was born in Washington, D.C., where her father worked for the U.S. Patent [...]
It’s the birthday of Cormac McCarthy, dammit, so cowboy up. McCarthy (b. 1933) is known for hard prose and hard storylines and hardened criminal characters, and after reading the briefest of summaries of several of his novels, I feel a little like curling up in a fetal position and keening. But McCarthy has won a [...]
It’s the birthday of E.B. White (1899-1985), best known for his classic children’s novel Charlotte’s Web (1952) and for The Elements of Style (published privately in 1919 by William Strunk, expanded and revised in 1959 by White), both of which have sold millions of copies. Elwyn Brooks White was born in Mount Vernon, New York, [...]
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 poet Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004), the first woman to serve as poet laureate of the United States. Her poetry often examines domestic life and married love and is witty, precise yet warm, and full of literary references. (NB: the post of poet laureate of the U.S. was officially established in 1985; [...]