1911 – Bel Kaufman, American teacher and author best known for her 1965 bestseller Up the Down Staircase.
1915 – Monica Dickens, English author who wrote both adult and children’s books and was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens.
1919 – T. Berry Brazleton, American pediatrician and author of parenting books.
1927 – Nayantara Sahgal, Indian novelist who writes in English; her best-known book is Rich Like Us.
1933 – Barbara Taylor Bradford, bestselling English novelist who says she writes about “ordinary women who go on to achieve the extraordinary.”
1934 – Jayne Cortez, African-American jazz and performance poet whose poetry is concerned with racial injustice and political oppression.
1934 – Richard Peck, prolific Newbery Medal-winning American young-adult novelist.
1940 – Wayne Dyer, American self-help author and motivational speaker whose first book, Your Erroneous Zones, is one of the bestselling books of all time
1947 – Caroline B. Cooney, American author of books for children, teens, and adults, best known for her young-adult suspense, romance, horror, and mystery novels.
1953 – Christopher Paul Curtis, Newbery Award-winning American author of children’s books, best known for his novel, Bud, Not Buddy.
1955 – Rick Steves, American travel writer and television personality.
1967 – Jon Ronson, Welsh journalist and nonfiction author who is best known for his book The Men Who Stare at Goats, which explored the work of U.S. army officers who experimented with military applications of paranormal phenomenon; a movie based loosely on the book starred George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey.
1967 – John Scalzi, American science-fiction author best known for his Old Man’s War series.
1977 – Oliver Jeffers, Australian-born, Northern Ireland-raised, children’s book author and illustrator, now based in the U.S.
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