Saturday, January 31, 2015

January 31

Born:



1872 - Zane Grey
American author of western fiction, known for his idealized depiction of the American West.







1905 - John O'Hara
American writer who started in short stories, continued into novels, and dabbled in screenplays.







1915 - Thomas Merton
Anglo-American Catholic writer whose biography, The Seven Storey Mountain, became a bestseller.







1923 - Norman Mailer
American author and two-time winner pf the Pulitzer Prize.








1935 - Kenzaburō Ōe
Japanese author, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature because he "with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."








1941 - Gerald McDermott
American children's author, known for his colorful treatments of mythological subjects.






1950 - Denise Fleming
American author of children's picture books.




1979 - Daniel Tammet
British writer whose 2006 memoir, Born on a Blue Day, deals with his life as an autistic savant.




Died:
1933 - John Galsworthy
1956 - A.A. Milne
2001 - Gordon R. Dickson
2013 - Diane Wolkstein
2020 - Mary Higgins Clark

Friday, January 30, 2015

January 30

Born:



1866 - Gelett Burgess
San Francisco Bay area writer, author of the Goops books.








1912 - Barbara Tuchman
American historian and author, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.



1924 - Lloyd Alexander 
American author of children's and young adult fantasy; winner of the 1969 Newbery Medal for The High King.







1931 - Allan W. Eckert
American naturalist and writer; winner of the 1972 Newbery Honor for Incident at Hawk's Hill.







1931 - Shirley Hazzard
Australian author, winner of the Man Booker Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.



1935 - Richard Brautigan
American author of parody and black comedy, mostly known for the novel Trout Fishing in America.







1941 - Gregory Benford
American astrophysicist and science fiction author.








1945 - Michael Dorris
American author who worked primarily within Native American literature.








1955 - Judith Tarr
American fantasy author, who also writes under the names Caitlin Brennen and Kathleen Bryan.







1957 - Polly Horvath
American-Canadian author, winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Young People's Fiction and a Newbery Honor winner.




Died:
1881 - Arthur O'Shaughnessy
1994 - Pierre Boulle
2007 - Sidney Sheldon

Thursday, January 29, 2015

January 29

Born:



1737 - Thomas Paine
English-American political activist and writer.




1860 - Anton Chekov
Russian dramatist and author, known for his short stories.








1866 - Romain Rolland
French writer, winner of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to the lofty idealism on his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings."







1867 - Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Spanish novelist mostly known in the English-speaking world for Hollywood adaptations of his works.



1915 - Bill Peet
American children's book author and illustrator, also a writer for Disney.








1923 - Paddy Chayefsky
American screenwriter known for his television and movie treatments, who also wrote the science fiction novel Altered States.







1927 - Edward Abbey
American author of environmental fiction and essays.








1930 - Christopher Collier
American historian and author of books for children and adults, a Pulitzer nominee and a Newbery Honor winner.



1943 - Rosemary Wells
American author of children's books, most notably the Max and Ruby series.







1954 - Oprah Winfrey
American media magnate and sometime author.










1962 - Olga Tokarczuk
Polish writer, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."




Died:
1763 - Louis Racine
1888 - Edward Lear
1944 - William Allen White
1956 - H.L. Mencken
1963 - Robert Frost
2004 - M.M. Kaye
2008 - Margaret Truman
2015 - Colleen McCullough

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

January 28

Born:



1873 - Colette
Last name of Sidonie-Gabriel Collette, French novelist and performer best known for her novel Gigi.







1915 - Nien Cheng
Chinese author whose Life and Death in Shanghai recounts her experiences in China's Cultural Revolution.







1927 - Vera Williams
American children's writer and illustrator, best known for her book A Chair for My Mother.






1928 - Philip Levine
American poet, winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.






1935 - David Lodge
English author and literary critic whose novels satirize campus life.







1936 - Ismail Kadare
Albanian writer and poet, winner of the International Booker Prize.



1945 - John Perkins
American author best known for his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.









1954 - Rick Warren
American evangelical pastor and author, whose book The Purpose Driven Life has sold over 30 million copies.







1959 - Megan McDonald
American author of children's books, most notably the Judy Moody series.











1968 - Analdur Indriðason
Icelandic writer of crime fiction; most notably featuring Detective Erlendur.






Died:
1939 - W.B. Yeats
1960 - Zora Neale Hurston
1978 - Ward Moore
1996 - Joseph Brodsky
2002 - Astrid Lindgren

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

January 27

Born:



1832 - Lewis Carroll
Pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, English writer, logician and deacon who is most well known for his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.







1939 - Julius Lester
American author primarily of books for children and young adults.




1949 - Ethan Mordden
American author whose fiction centers on New York gay culture.




1955 - Alexander Stuart
British-born, Los Angeles based writer whose most famous work is The War Zone on which the film was based.







1958 - James Grippando
American novelist and lawyer, known for his crime and legal fiction.




Died:
1851 - John James Audubon
1940 - Isaak Babel
2009 - Blair Lent
2009 - John  Updike
2010 - J.D. Salinger
2010 - Howard Zinn
2013 - Stanley Karnow

Monday, January 26, 2015

January 26

Born:



1929 - Jules Feiffer
American cartoonist and winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize.








1949 - Jonathan Carroll
American author of magical realist novels.








1951 - Laurence Shames
American author of Florida-based fiction and mystery novels.








1974 - Shannon Hale 
American author of young adult fantasy.




Died:
2000 - A.E van Vogt

Sunday, January 25, 2015

January 25

Born:



1759 - Robert Burns
Scottish poet of the Romantic era; known as the national poet of Scotland.








1874 - W. Somerset Maugham
British writer, one of the most popular novelists of his generation.








1882 - Virginia Woolf
English writer of the Modernist movement; member of the Bloomsbury group.








1905 - Margery Sharp
English author best known for her children's story The Rescuers, which was later adapted into two Disney movies.







1935 - J. G. Farrell
Irish author, two of whose Empire trilogy titles won the Booker Prize.



1950 - Gloria Naylor
African-American novelist, most well known for her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place.







1970 - Stephen Chbosky
American novelist, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.



Died:
1908 - Ouida
2011 - Vincent Cronin