May 31

Born:

1819 - Walt Whitman
American poet whose best-known collection is Leaves of Grass.

1887 - Saint-John Perse
French poet; winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Literature "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time."

1893 - Elizabeth Coatsworth
American author of fiction and poetry whose novel The Cat Who Went to Heaven won the 1931 Newbery Medal.

1898 - Norman Vincent Peale
Minister and author, most notably of The Power of Positive Thinking.

1947 - Phillip Hoose
American author of books for both adults and children, and who won a Newbery Honor for his children's biography of Claudette Colvin.

1948 - Svetlana Alexievich
Belarusian author, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for "her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

1968 - John Connolly
Irish writer; author of the Charlie Parker detective series.




Died:
1963 - Edith Hamilton
1996 - Timothy Leary

May 30

Born:

1899 - Cornelia Otis Skinner
American actress, writer and biographer.

1903 - Countee Cullen
American poet and leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

1912 - Millicent Selsam
American author of children's non-fiction.

1919 - Margaret Coit
American historian; author of books on history for both children and adult audiences. Winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

1922 - Hal Clement
Pen name of American science fiction writer Harry Clement Stubbs.

1955 - Colm Tóibín
Irish writer, voted one of Britain's Top 300 Intellectuals.




Died:
1744 - Alexander Pope
1778 - Voltaire
1960 - Boris Pasternak
2007 - William Morris Meredith, Jr.

May 29

Born:

1874 - G.K. Chesterton
English writer of wide-ranging views and interests.

1892 - Max Brand
American author of literary westerns.

1906 - T.H. White
English author best known for his series of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King.

1917 - John F. Kennedy
35th President of the United States and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage.

1923 - Bernard Clavel
French writer; winner of the Prix Goncourt for his novel Les Fruits de l'hiver.

1932 - Paul R. Ehrlich
American biologist and author of the controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb.

1938 - Brock Cole
American children's author and illustrator, National Book Award finalist in 1997 for The Facts Speak for Themselves.

1949 - Andrew Clements
American author of children's fiction.

1967 - Steven Levitt
American economist, co-author of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics.




Died:
1958 - Juan Ramón Jiménez
1970 - John Gunther

May 28

Born:

1908 - Ian Fleming
English naval intelligence officer and author of the James Bond spy novels.

1912 - Patrick White
English-born Australian writer, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature."

1916 - Walker Percy
American author whose works were set in the American south, particularly Louisiana.

1940 - Maeve Binchy
Irish novelist whose books often revolve around life in small-town Ireland.

1947 - Zahi Hawass
Egyptian archaeologist, author of many books on Egyptology.

1947 - Richard White
American historian and author specializing in the history of the American West.

1955 - Geoffrey A. Landis
American NASA scientist and hard science fiction author.

1955 - Laura Amy Schlitz
American children's author whose book Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! won the 2008 Newbery Medal




Died:
1843 - Noah Webster
1849 - Anne Brontë
2002 - Mildred Benson
2014 - Maya Angelou

May 27

Born:

1867 - Arnold Bennett
English novelist who has an omelette named after him at the Savoy Hotel in London.

1894 - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Pen name of French novelist Louis Feridinand August Destouches, best known for the semi-autobiographical Journey to the End of Night.

1894 - Dashiell Hammett
American author of hard-boiled detective novels, creator of the Sam Spade character as well as Nick and Nora Charles (and their crossword favorite dog Asta.)

1907 - Rachel Carson
American marine biologist and conservationist whose 1962 book Silent Spring helped advance the environmental movement.

1912 - John Cheever
American novelist and short story writer whose fiction is usually set in the American suburbs or in Italy.

1915 - Herman Wouk
American author whose The Caine Mutiny won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1925 - Tony Hillerman
American author of detective novels; primarily his Navajo Tribal Police mysteries.

1930 - John Barth
American novelist and short story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictional qualities of his work.

1934 - Harlan Ellison
American author of speculative fiction; multiple winner of Hugos, Nebulas and Edgars.

1940 - Edmund Morris
American writer, winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Theodore Roosevelt.





1945 - Anthony Pagden
American author, translator and professor.

1966 - Heston Blumenthal
English chef and cookbook author.




Died:
1867 - Thomas Bulfinch
1939 - Joseph Roth
1949 - Robert Ripley
1957 - Robert Lawson
1974 - Kurt Wiese
2018 - Gardner Dozois
2019 - Tony Horwitz

May 26

Born:
1887 - Leonard Bacon
American poet; winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Sunderland Capture.

1915 - Antonia Forest
Pseudonym of British children's book author Patricia Giulia Caulfield Kate Rubenstein, best known for her Marlow series.

1933 - Edward Whittemore
American novelist whose major work was the Jerusalem Quartet.

1934 - Sheila Greenwald
American children's book author, creator of the Rosy Cole series.

1947 - Carol  O'Connell
American author of the Kathy Mallory crime fiction novels.

1954 - Alan Hollinghurst
British novelist and poet, winner of the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.

1964 - Caitlín Kiernan
Irish-born American paleontologist and author of dark fantasy.




Died:
1914 - Jacob Riis
2003 - Kathleen Winsor
2012 - Leo Dillon
2013 - Jack Vance

May 25

Born:

1803 - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
English novelist, poet and playwright, perhaps best known for the opening line "It was a dark and stormy night."

1803 - Ralph Waldo Emerson
American essayist and poet of the Transcendentalist movement.

1899 - Boris Artzybasheff
Russian-born AMerican illustrator, winner of a Newbery Medal for his work on Dhan Gopal Mukerji's Gay-Neck.

1908 - Theodore Roethke
American poet who won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book The Waking.

1927 - Robert Ludlum
Best-selling American author of thriller novels.

1932 - John Gregory Dunne
American novelist; younger brother of author Dominick Dunne and husband of author Joan Didion.

1935 - W.P. Kinsella
Canadian novelist best known for his work Shoeless Joe, which was adapted into the film Field of Dreams.

1936 - David Levering Lewis
American historian, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History.

1938 - Raymond Carver
American short story writer, known for minimalism and dirty realism.

1938 - Joyce Carol Thomas
African-American poet, playwright and children's author.

1949 - Jamaica Kincaid
Caribbean novelist, born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson.

1952 - Al Sarrantonio
American horror and science fiction author and anthologist.

1953 - Eve Ensler
American feminist playwright and author, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.

1967 - Poppy Z Brite
Pen name of American author Billy Martin (born Melissa Ann Brite), known for his gothic horror featuring gay and bisexual characters.



Died:
2003 - Sloan Wilson