August 30

Born:

1797 - Mary Shelley
English novelist best known for her work Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.

1901 - John Gunther
American journalist and author, most well known now for Death Be Not Proud, an account of his son's death to brain cancer.

1909 - Virginia Lee Burton
American children's author and illustrator, winner of the 1943 Caldecott Medal for The Little House.

 1925 - Laurent de Brunhoff
French author and illustrator who continued the popular series of children's books about Babar the elephant, which was created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff.

1938 - Donald Crews
American author and illustrator of children's books, and two-time winner of the Caldecott Medal.

1943 - Robert Crumb
More commonly known as R. Crumb, he was a founder of the underground comics movement.

1955 - Judith Tarr
American writer of fantasy novels. Also apparently breeds Lipizzan horses.




Died:
1985 - Taylor Caldwell
2006 - Naguib Mahfouz
2007 - Michael Jackson
2013 - Seamus Heaney
2015 - Oliver Sacks

August 29

Born:

1632 - John Locke
English philosopher best known for his works on government, education, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

1809 - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
American physician, poet and writer; one of the Fireside Poets group.

1862 - Maurice Maeterlinck
Belgian writer; winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations"

1891 - Marquis James
American journalist and author; two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

1922 - John Edward Williams 
American author whose epistolary novel Augustus won the National Book Award in 1973.

1952 - Karen Hesse
American children's and YA author, who won the 1998 Newbery for Out of the Dust.

1954 - Michael P. Kube-McDowell
American science fiction novelist who has written in the Star Wars universe, as well as his own works.




Died:
1769 - Edmond Hoyle
1958 - Marjorie Flack
1979 - Gertrude Chandler Warner
1981 - Lowell Thomas

August 28

Born:

1749 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German writer, artist and politician, and man of generally unpronounceable last name.




1864 - Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe
American author and editor who won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for Barrett Wendell and His Letters.

1913 - Robertson Davies
Canadian novelist, "one of Canada's most well-known and popular writers." Nope, I hadn't heard of him either.

1915 - Tasha Tudor
American author and illustrator of children's books.

1916 - Jack Vance
American author of mostly science fiction. His first Hugo award was in 1963, his most recent 2010.

1917 - Jack Kirby
American comic book artist. Co-created the Captain America character. Comics' Jack Kirby Award is named for him.

1937 - Allen Say
Asian American children's author and illustrator, best know for his Caldecott award-winning Grandfather's Journey.

1948 - Vonda McIntyre
American science fiction author, who has written in both the Star Wars and Star Trek universes. Her novel The Moon and the Sun won a Nebula award in 1997.

1952 - Rita Dove
American poet and author, Poet Laureate of the U.S. from 1993-1995 and winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.




Died:
1978 - Bruce Catton
1978 - Robert Shaw 
1989 - John Steptoe
1995 - Michael Ende
1988 - Max Shulman
1993 - William Stafford

August 27

Born:

1871 - Theodore Dreiser
American novelist, most well known for his novels Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy.

1899 - C.S. Forester
The pen name of English author Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, whose most famous work is his 12 book Horatio Hornblower series

1929 - Ira Levin
American author and dramatist, whose 1954 book A Kiss Before Dying won the Edgar award for best first novel.

1932 - Antonia Fraser
The pen name of Dame Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, an Anglo-Irish author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction.

1939 - William Least Heat-Moon
American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage ancestry. His most well known works are the travel trilogy that began with Blue Highways.

1959 - Jeanette Winterson 
British writer whose first work, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won a Whitbread Award for Best First Novel.





1963 - W.E.B DuBois
1969 - Ivy Compton-Burnett
2011 - Stetson Kennedy

August 26

Born:

1880 - Guillame Apollinaire
French poet, playwright and novelist who coined the term Surrealism.

1901 - Eleanor Dark
Australian author whose best known work is The Timeless Land.

1903 - Caroline Pafford Miller
American author whose first novel, Lamb in His Bosom, won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize.

1904 - Christopher Isherwood
English-American novelist who was very involved with the Vedanta Society of Southern California.

1922 - Irving R. Levine
American journalist and longtime correspondent for NBC News. His three books on life in the Soviet Union each became bestsellers.

1952 - Will Shortz
American puzzle creator; since 1993, the crossword puzzle editor for the New York Times.

1957 - Nikky Finney
American poet; winner of the 2011 National Book Award for her collection Head Off & Split.

1963 - Stephen J. Dubner 
American journalist who co-wrote, with economist Steven Levitt, the book Freakonomics.




 Died:
1945 - Franz Werfel
1974 - Charles Lindbergh
1977 - H.A. Rey
1989 - Irving Stone
1995 - John Brunner
2009 - Dominick Dunne

August 25

Born:

1836 - Bret Harte
American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.

1899 - Paul Herman Buck
American historian who won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900.

1921 - Brian Moore
Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter, known for his depictions of life in Northern Ireland after WWII.

1925 - Thea Astley
Australian novelist and short story writer who won many prizes for Australian fiction.

1933 - Patrick McManus
American humor writer, whose columns focusing on the outdoors have been gathered into popular books.

1935 - Charles Wright
American poet; winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1937 - Virginia Auwer Wolff
American author of children's books, most well known for her Make Lemonade series.

1938 - Frederick Forsyth
English author of thriller novels who has many best-selling titles to his name.

1942 - Howard Jacobsen
British author and journalist whose The Finkler Question won the 2010 Booker Prize.

1946 - Charles Ghigna
American author of children's books, who also goes by the name Father Goose.

1949 - Martin Amis 
British novelist and son of celebrated author Kingsley Amis.

1959 - Ian Falconer
American children's book author and illustrator, best known for his Olivia books.

1959 - Lane Smith
American children's book author and illustrator, best known for his collaborations with Jon Scieszka.




Died:
1956 - Alfred Kinsey
1976 - Eyvind Johnson
1984 - Truman Capote
2003 - Tom Feelings

August 24

Born:

1872 - Max Beerbohn
English writer now best known for Zuleika Dobson, a parody of undergraduate life at Oxford.

1890 - Jean Rhys
The pen name of Ellen Gwendolyn Rees Williams, a Dominican author who lived in England from age 16 on. Her most well-known work is Wide Sargasso Sea, which was written as a prequel to Jane Eyre.

1899 - Jorge Luis Borges
Argentine essayist, poet and short-story writer.

1915 - James Tiptree, Jr.
The pen name of American science fiction author Alice Bradley Sheldon. Mostly writing short stories, she nevertheless broke down the barriers between writing seen as specifically male or female.

1922 - Howard Zinn
American academic historian, author, playwright, and social activist. He wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling A People's History of the United States.

1936 - A.S. Byatt
The pen name of Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, who was listed by The Times as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

1937 - Susan Sheehan
American writer, winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for Is There No Place On Earth For Me?

1947 - Paulo Coelho
Brazilian novelist whose allegorical novel The Alchemist has been translated into more than 70 languages.

1948 - Alexander McCall-Smith
Rhodesian-born Scottish writer most well known as the author of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

1951 - Orson Scott Card
American author primarily known for his science fiction, in particular Ender's Game and the ensuing series.

1951 - Oscar Hijuelos
American novelist; first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1990 for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

1963 - Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Icelandic writer of crime fiction and children's books.

1977 - John Green
American author of young adult fiction, including the recently filmed The Fault in our Stars.





Died:
1923 - Kate Douglas Wiggin
2004 - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
2006 - Leonard Levy