1867 – Georges Polti, French writer best known for his list of thirty-six dramatic situations.
1896 – Ann Nolan Clark, American children’s writer, who won a Newbery Medal for Secret of the Andes.
1896 – Betty Smith, American author best known for her novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
1897 – Zenta Mauriņa, Latvian writer, essayist, and researcher in philology.
1913 – Muriel Rukeyser, American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism.
1917 – Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee (Urdu: شان الحق حقی), notable Urdu poet, writer, journalist, broadcaster, translator, critic, researcher, linguist and lexicographer.
1939 – Alan Armstrong, Newbery Honor-winning American children’s author.
1933 – Vasireddy Seethadevi (Telugu: వాసిరెడ్డి సీతాదేవి), Indian writer in the Telugu language who published 42 novels, 10 short-story collections, and several essays; when her novel Mareechika was banned, she took the government to court and got her book released.
1953 – Robert Charles Wilson, American-Canadian Hugo Award-winning science-fiction author.
