April 7

Born:

1770 - William Wordsworth
English Romantic poet, considered one of the first of the Romantic Era.

1889 - Gabriela Mistral
Pseudonym of Chilean poet and feminist Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1928 - James White
Northern Irish science fiction author.

1931 - Donald Barthelme
American author of postmodernist short fiction.

1938 - Iris Johansen
American author of crime fiction and romance novels.




Died:
1836 - William Godwin
1958 - Henry F. Pringle
1987 - Terry Carr
2003 - Cecile de Brunhoff
2017 - Patricia McKissack

April 6

Born:

1892 - Lowell Thomas
American writer and traveler, known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous.

1958 - Graeme Base
Australian author and artist of picture books.

1966 - Vince Flynn
American author of political thrillers.





Died:
1860 - James Kirke Paulding
1935 - Edwin Arlington Robinson
1992 - Isaac Asimov

April 5

Born:

1588 - Thomas Hobbes
English philosopher whose work Leviathan set the foundations of western political philosophy.

1837 - Algernon Charles Swinburne
English poet, playwright, novelist and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

1904 - Richard Eberhart
American poet, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner.

1917 - Robert Bloch
American writer of horror and science fiction; most famous as the author of Psycho, the basis of the Hitchcock film.

1920 - Arthur Hailey
British/Canadian author known for books which were set inside a single industry, such as Airport, which was adapted into a series of films.





1937 - Joseph Lelyveld
American journalist and Pulitzer-prize winning author, much of whose work centered on South Africa.

1956 - Anthony Horowitz
English novelist and screenwriter, known for his children's novels and also his many British television credits.

1957 - Anu Garg
Indian author whose works explore the intricacies of the English language.





Died:
1997 - Allen Ginsberg
2005 - Saul Bellow
2014 - Peter Matthiessen

April 4

Born:

1818 - Thomas Mayne Reid
Scots-Irish American adventure novelist.

1886 - Frank Luther Mott
American historian and journalist; winner of a 1939 Pulitzer in History for A History of American Magazines.

1896 - Robert E. Sherwood
American Pulitzer-winning playwright, who also won a Pulitzer for Biography for a book on FDR.

1908 - Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
American author whose upbringing in a house of 12 children provided the material for the memoir Cheaper by the Dozen.

1914 - Marguerite Duras
Saigon-born French author and screenwriter whose childhood in Asia informs her fiction setting.

1928 - Maya Angelou
American author and poet, best known for her series of autobiographical works.

1932 - Johanna Reiss
Dutch-born American writer, Caldecott Medal winner for An Upstairs Room.

1942 - Elizabeth Levy
American author of children's books, known for the Something Queer is Going On
series.

1942 - Kitty Kelley
American author of unauthorized biographies of the famous and powerful.

1948 - Dan Simmons 
American author of science fiction, most notably the Hyperion Cantos.





Died:
1991  Max Frisch

April 3

Born:

1783 - Washington Irving
American author, best known for his short stories like Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

1928 - Jennifer Paterson
British celebrity chef; with Clarissa Dickson Wright, one of the Two Fat Ladies.

1934 - Jane Goodall
British primatologist and world's foremost expert on chimpanzees.

1935 - Harold Kushner
American rabbi and popular author.






Died:
1950 - Carter Woodson
1971 - Manfred Bennington Lee
1991 - Graham Greene
2013 - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

April 2

Born:

1725 - Giacomo Casanova
Italian adventurer and author whose Histoire de ma vie (Story of my Life) was written while he was a Bohemian librarian.

1805 - Hans Christian Anderson
Danish author and poet; best known for his fairy tales.

1840 - Émile Zola
French novelist and playwright; member of the naturalist school.

1920 - William W. Warner
American biologist and writer; winner of the 1977 Pulitzer Prize fro Non-fiction for Beautiful Swimmers.

1925 - George MacDonald Fraser
English-born Scottish author most well known for his Flashman series of historical novels.

1945 - Anne Waldman
American poet long connected with the Beat group.

1947 - Camille Paglia
American author, social critic and "dissident feminist."

1948 - Daniel Okrent
American writer and editor, inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball.

1948 - Joan D. Vinge
American science fiction author who won the 1981 Hugo Award for her novel The Snow Queen.

1962 - Mark Shulman
American author of books for children and young adults.




Died:
1914 - Paul Heyse
1966 - C.S. Forester
1995 - Harvey Penick

April 1

Born:

1868 - Edmund Rostand 
French poet and dramatist best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac.

1875 - Edgar Wallace
English writer now most famous as the co-creator of King Kong, as well as many mysteries.

1922 - William Manchester
American historian and biographer; recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

1926 - Anne McCaffrey
American-born Irish writer, much of whose science fiction is set on the fictional world of Pern.

1929 - Milan Kundera
Czech-born, naturalized French author whose works like The Unbearable Lightness of Being were banned by the communist government of Czechoslovakia.

1942 - Samuel R. Delany
American author, primarily of science fiction, for which he is a multiple Nebula Award winner.

1947 - Francine Prose
American novelist and literature professor.

1970 - Brad Meltzer
American author of political thrillers.





Died:
1984 - Elizabeth Goudge
1985 - Douglass Wallop
2011 - Manning Marable
2019 - Vonda McIntyre