September 30

Born:

1898 - Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
Swiss-born American author of children's book, who worked as a team with his wife Ingri.

1924 - Truman Capote
American author and playwright responsible for many modern classics.

1927 - W.S. Merwin
American poet, winner of the Pulitzer prize for Poetry in 1979 and 2009, and the 17th US Poet Laureate.

1928 - Elie Wiesel
Romanian-born Jewish-American writer, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. Author of 57 books including his most well-known, Night.

1929 - Carol Fenner
American author of children's books, winner of the Coretta Scott King and the Christopher Awards.

1937 - Jurek Becker
Polish-born German writer, whose most famous work is Jacob the Liar, which has been made into two different movies.

1950 - Laura Esquivel
Mexican author most well known for her first novel, Like Water for Chocolate.

1953 - S.M. Stirling 
 French-born Canadian-American science fiction and fantasy author. Stirling is probably best known for his Draka series of alternate history novels

1960 - Nicola Griffith
British science fiction author, winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Nebula Award, among others.

1985 - Téa Obreht
Belgrade-born American novelist whose first novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011.

Died:
1987 - Alfred Bester

1990 - Patrick White

1998 - Robert Lewis Taylor

2010 - Stephen J. Cannell

September 29

Born:

1547 - Miguel de Cervantes
Spanish novelist, poet and playwright whose major work, Don Quixote, is considered the first modern European novel.

1810 - Elizabeth Gaskell
British novelist of the Victorian era, possibly best known for her biography of Charlotte Brontë.

1897 - Herbert Agar
American journalist who won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The People's Choice.

1915 - Oscar Handlin
American historian who won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Uprooted.

1923 - Stan Berenstain
American author and illustrator of children's books, known for the Berenstain Bears series he co-wrote with his wife Jan.

1927 - Elizabeth Peters
Pen name of American author Barbara Mertz, who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Michaels. As Elizabeth Peters, her main series involves Egyptologist Amelia Peabody.

1934 - Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi
Hungarian-born American psychology professor best known for his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience.

1934 - Stuart Kaminsky
American mystery writer, recipient of both Edgar and Agatha awards.

1936 - James Fogle
American author of the autobiographical novel Drugstore Cowboy.

1959 - Jon Olav Fosse

Norwegian dramatist, 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable."

Died:
1902 - Émile Zola
1967 - Carson McCullers
1973 - W.H. Auden
2008 - Hayden Carruth

September 28

Born:

1803 - Prosper Mérimée
 French dramatist and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, on which Bizet based the opera Carmen.

1856 - Kate Douglas Wiggin
American educator and author of children's stories, best known for her novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

1944 - Marcia Muller
American mystery and thriller novelist, most notably of her Sharon McCone series.




Died:
1891 - Herman Melville
1966 - André Breton

1970 - John Dos Passos
1993 - Peter De Vries
2016 - Gloria Naylor

September 27

Born:

1871 - Grazia Deledda
Italian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."

1911 - Nicholas Mordvinoff
Russian-born American artist whose illustrations for the book Finders Keepers won him the 1952 Caldecott Medal.

1917 - Louis Auchincloss
American lawyer and novelist who wrote about the East Coast upper class.

1924 - Ernest Becker
American cultural anthropologist whose book The Denial of Death won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.

1924 - Bernard Waber
American children's author best known fr the Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile books.

1933 - Paul Goble
British-born American author and illustrator of children's books, many with Native American themes.Won the Caldecott Medal in 1979 for The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses.

1958 - Irvine Welsh
Scottish novelist best known for his novel Trainspotting.




Died:
2004 - John Edward Mack
2009 - William Safire

September 26

Born:

1872 - Max Ehrmann
American poet most known for his 1927 work "Desiderata."

1888 - T.S. Eliot
American-born British poet whose best known works are "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land."

1949 - Jane Smiley
American novelist who won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her book A Thousand Acres.

1962 - Mark Haddon
English novelist and poet, best known for his 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.





Died:
1904 - Lafcadio Hearn
1935 - Andy Adams
1946 - William, Jr. Strunk
1947 - Hugh Lofting
1952 - George Santayana
1973 - Samuel Flagg Bemis

September 25

Born:
1860 - Charles Edward Russell
American journalist, winner of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas.

1897 - William Faulkner
American writer of Southern literature, winner of the Pulitzer (twice) and the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel."

1923 - Robert Laxalt
Basque-American writer whose novels focused on the Basque experience in Nevada and the American West.

1952 - bell hooks

American author, professor, feminist and social activist.

1930 - Shel Silverstein
American author and illustrator of children's books.  Also wrote the song "A Boy Named Sue," which Johnny Cash made a hit.

1955 - Luanne Rice
American author whose fiction tends to deal with nature and the sea.

1960 - Kristin Hannah
American author from the Seattle area.





Died:
1933 - Ring Lardner
1960 - Emily Post
1968 - Cornell Woolrich
1970 - Erich Maria Remarque
1999 - Marion Zimmer Bradley
2003 - George Plimpton

September 24

Born:

1717 - Horace Walpole
English art historian and author who is now best known for his Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto.

1896 - F. Scott Fitzgerald
American author of Jazz Age novels and member of the Lost Generation.

1912 - Robert Lewis Taylor
American author, winner of the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.

1934 - John Brunner
British science fiction author who won the Hugo award in 1968 for his novel Stand on Zanzibar.

1950 - John Kessel
American author of science fiction and fantasy.




Died:
1947 - Andrew C. McLaughlin
1991 - Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
2004 - Françoise Sagan

September 23

Born:

480 BC - Euripides 
One of the three great tragedians of classical Athens.

1901 - Jaroslav Seifert
Czech writer, winner of the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his poetry which endowed with freshness adn rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man."

1949 - Jerry B. Jenkins
American novelist and biographer, best known as co-author, with Tim LaHaye, of the Left Behind series.

1950 - Bruce Brooks
American author of young adult and children's literature.










1956 - Peter David
American author of comic books and science fiction.

1964 - Bill Phillips
American author of the fitness book Body for Life.




Died:
1241 - Snorri Sturluson
1870 - Prosper Mérimée
1889 - Wilkie Collins
1939 - Sigmund Freud
1973 - Pablo Neruda
1992 - Glendon Swarthout
1994 - Robert Bloch
1997 - Natalie Savage Carlson