July 7

Born:

1893 - Herbert Feis
American author who won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference.

1904 - Simone Beck
French cooking teacher and co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Julia Child and Louisette Bertholle.

1907 - Robert Heinlein
American science fiction author, one of the most influential of his time. Known for novels like Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, as well as many short stories.

1915 - Margaret Walker
An African-American poet and writer, full name Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander. Known for poems like For My People and her novel, Jubilee.

1931 - David Eddings
American author of fantasy novels. Best known for his coming-of-age series the Belgariad and the Mallorean.

1932 - T. J. Bass
American science fiction author and doctor, more well known for his claims about the healthfulness of running than his scifi.

1933 - David McCullough
American author, narrator, historian and lecturer. Pulitzer Prize winner for his biographies of Truman and John Adams.

1941 - Nancy Farmer
American author of three Newbery Honor books, as well as the winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, The House of the Scorpion.

1948 - Kathy Reichs
American crime writer and forensic anthropologist. Known for her Temperance Brennan mysteries.

1956 - Peter D'Adamo
A naturopathic physician who set out the blood type diet in his book Eat Right For Your Type.

1961 - Eric Jerome Dickey
American author best known for his portrayals of African-American life, as well as grifters and ex-conx.

1968 - Jeff VanderMeer
American editor, publisher and writer of books in the New Weird genre.



Died:
1901 - Johanna Spyri
1930 - Arthur Conan Doyle
1984 - George Oppen
1999 - Julie Campbell Tatham
2011 - Allan W. Eckert

July 6

Born:
1869 - Verner von Heidenstam
Swedish poet and novelist; awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916 "in recognition of his significance as the leading representative of a new era in our literature."

1890 - Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Indian man of letters, winner of the 1928 Newbery Medal for Gay Neck, The Story of a Pigeon.

1892 - Will James
American artist and writer whose Smoky the Cowhorse won the 1927 Newbery Medal.

1930 - Gloria Skurzynski

American author of YA and children's books.

1935 - 14th Dalai Lama

A man with many names. Born Lhamo Dondrub, religious name Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, Tenzin Gyatso for short. The flowing robes, the grace...  Author of quite a number of books.

1952 - Hilary Mantel
English author and two-time winner of the Booker Prize.

1955 - William Wall
Irish novelist and poet.

1962 - Peter Hedges

American novelist, screenwriter and film director. Wrote both the novel and screenplay for What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

1972 - Laurent Gaudé
French writer, winner of the 2004 Prix Goncourt for his novel The Scortas' Sun.

Died:

1535 - Sir Thomas More

1893 - Guy de Maupassant

1932 - Kenneth Grahame

1962 - William Faulkner
1979 - T. Harry Williams
1992 - Mary Q. Steele

2005 - Evan Hunter

2005 - Claude Simon

2007 - Kathleen Woodwiss

July 5

Born:

1889 - Jean Cocteau
French poet, novelist, and playwright, best known for his films. Les Enfant terribles is his most famous novel.

1935 - John Gilmore
American author, journalist and actor, best known for his true-crime work and detective mysteries. His big break came with a book about the unsolved Black Dahlia murders.

1935 - John Schoenherr
American illustrator whose collaboration with Jane Yolen on the book Owl Moon won the 1988 Caldecott Medal.

1946 - John J. Nance
American pilot and author of thrillers, often involving flying and airplanes.

1958 - Bill Watterson
American cartoonist, author of Calvin & Hobbes. Hopefully not much more needs to be said...



Died:
1991 - Howard Nemerov

July 4

Born:

1804 - Nathaniel Hawthorne
American novelist and short story writer from Massachusetts. Known for his works The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and Twice-Told Tales.

1883 - Rube Goldberg
American cartoonist and inventor, known for his drawings of overly complex devices that came to be named after him.

1918 - Ann Landers
For it's first 12 years, the Ask Ann Landers column in the Chicago Sun-Times was written by its creator, Ruth Crowley, but it was Esther (Eppie) Lederer who wrote it from 1955-2002 and in fact assumed the public persona of Ann Landers.

1918 - Abigail Van Buren
Pauline Phillips (the twin sister of Eppie Lederer) is the advice columnist behind the Abigal Van Buren pen name, of Dear Abby fame. Her daughter Jeanne now writes the column.

1927 - Neil Simon
American playwright and screenwriter. Known for Broadway plays like The Odd Couple and Biloxi Blues, he won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Lost in Yonkers.

1931 - Sébastien Japrisot
The pen-name (and anagram) of French author Jean-Baptiste Rossi. Not well known outside of France, he has nevertheless been called "the French Graham Greene" and has won numerous awards there.

1937 - Richard Rhodes
American journalist, historian and author of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

1944 - Jaimy Gordon
American writer whose Lord of Misrule won the 2010 National Book Award for Fiction.




Died:
1761 - Samuel Richardson
1848 - François-René Chateaubriand
1974 - Georgette Heyer
1990 - Olive Ann Burns
1997 - Charles Kuralt
2008 - Thomas M. Disch
2010 - Robert Neil Butler

July 3

Born:

1860 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
American sociologist and writer, now remembered best for her semi-autobiogrpahical work The Yellow Wallpaper.

1876 - Ralph Barton Perry
American philosopher whose book on William James won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

1883 - Franz Kafka
German author of novels and short stories.  Well-known works include The Metamorphosis and The Penal Colony.

1908 - M.F.K. Fisher
Full name Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, an American food writer. Prolific - 27 books, mostly about traveling and eating in France and California.

1937 - Tom Stoppard
A British playwright and screenwriter. Has won many awards, including those for Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

1947 - Dave Barry
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist. His humor column ran in the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. Novels include Big Trouble, as well as the Peter and the Starcatchers series, written with Ridley Pearson.

1952 - Rohinton Mistry
Indian-born Canadian writer, most well known for his novel A Fine Balance, which was an Oprah Book Club selection in November 2001.

1954 - Franny Billingsley
American author of award-winning children's fantasy books.









1958 - Charlie Higson
An English actor, comedian and author, known for dystopian fiction and for writing the Young Bond series.

1964 - Joanne Harris
British author, whose novel Chocolat was made into a feature film starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche





Deaths:

1908 - Joel Chandler Harris
1974 - John Crowe Ransom

July 2

Born:

1877 - Herman Hesse
German-Swiss poet, novelist and painter. Most famous works include Steppenwolf and Siddhartha. Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946 "for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style."

1919 - Jean Craighead George
American author of children's and young adult literature, most well known for My Side of the Mountain and it's sequels.

1923 - Cyril M. Kornbluth
American science fiction author who wrote under a variety of aliases; a frequent collaborator with Frederick Pohl.

1923 - Wisława Szymborska-Włodek
Polish poet; winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."

1951 - Jack Gantos 
American author of children's books, creator of the Rotten Ralph character.

1964 - Elizabeth Graver
American author whose The End of the Point was a National Book Award nominee in 2013.

1972 - Darren Shan
The pen name of Darren O'Shaughnessy, an Irish author of young adult novels, most notably The Saga of Darren Shan and the Cirque du Freak books.

1974 - Matthew Reilly
An Australian action thriller writer.






Died:

1566 - Nostradamus
1778 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1961 - Ernest Hemingway
1977 - Vladimir Nabokov
1999 - Mario Puzo
2010 - Beryl Bainbridge
2016 - Elie Wiesel

July 1

Born:

1633 - Johann Heinrich Heidegger
A Swiss theologian, who wrote in Latin, mainly against the Catholic church.

1646 - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
German mathematician and philosopher. Known for his Discourse on Metaphysics as well as his contributions to Formal logic and the invention of calculus. Also thought of as one of the founders of library science.

1804 -George Sand
The pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, a a French novelist. A prolific writer, she is now known more for her progressive views and scandalous behavior.

1869 - William Strunk, Jr.
An English grammarian, known for The Elements of Style, which was revised by his student, E.B. White.




1887 - Amber Reeves
British feminist writer and scholar, also known for her extramarital relationship with H.G. Wells.

1892 - James M. Cain
American author and journalist, associated with the hardboiled crime fiction genre.

1915 - Jean Stafford
American author whose Collected Stories won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1955 - Lisa Scottoline
American author of legal thrillers. The second book in her Rosato & Associates series, Final Appeal,  won an Edgar award in 1995.

1981 - Genevieve Valentine
American science fiction and fantasy author whose first novel is Mechanique.




Died:
1896 - Harriet Beecher Stowe
1961 - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
1965 - Robert Ruark
2014 - Walter Dean Myers