1830 – Paul Heyse, Nobel Prize-winning German poet, dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer.
1849 – Tetcho Suehiro (born Yujiro Suehiro), Japanese politician, novelist, and journalist.
1867 – Lionel Pigot Johnson, English poet, essayist, and critic whose work influenced the Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe.
1871 – Charles Howard McIlwain, Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and writer on American history.
1910 – An Rutgers van der Loeff-Basenau, Dutch author of books for children and adults; she also used the pen name Rutger Bass.
1912 – Louis Paul Boon, prolific novelist who was arguably the 20th century’s most important Flemish writer in the Dutch language
1915 – Carl Emil Schorske, Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural historian.
1916 – Junpei Gomikawa, Japanese novelist best known for his World War II novel The Human Condition.
1918 – Richard David Ellmann, literary critic and National Book Award winner; biographer of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and William Butler Yates.
1920 – Lawrence Sanders, novelist and crime-fiction writer.
1921 – Madelyn Pugh (Davis), radio and TV writer, best known for her work on “I Love Lucy”; she was also a broadcast journalist and wrote about sports.
1928 – Malohat Badriddinovna Shahobova, Tajikistani linguist, author, and professor; much of her work focuses on the relationships between Tajik and English.
1932 – Yumie Hiraiwa, award-winning Japanese screenwriter and novelist.
1939 – Robert Nye, English poet, novelist, playwright, and writer of children’s stories.
1953 – Heather Graham, American author of romance novels.
1955 – Yangji Lee, award-winning Japanese-born Korean novelist; she died at age 37 of
acute myocarditis.
1959 – Ben Okri, controversial Man Booker Prize-winning Nigerian poet, author, and essayist.
1965 – Sunetra Gupta, writer, translator, biologist, university teacher, epidemiologist, professor, and novelist.
