1811 – Harriet Beecher Stowe, American abolitionist and author, known for the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
1899 – Yasunari Kawabata, Nobel Prize-winning Japanese novelist and short-story writer.
1904 – Margaret Bourke-White, American photographer, documentary photographer, and autobiographer.
1923 – Anne Judith Kerr, German-born British writer and illustrator of children’s picture books and teen novels.
1928 – Che Guevara, Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military strategist who chronicled his travels in a memoir.
1928 – Janice May Udry, American author of children’s books.
1929 – Lensey Chao Namioka, Chinese-born mathematician and American writer of children’s books.
1933 – Jerzy Kosiński, National Book Award-winning Polish-born American novelist.
1939 – Peter Mayle, British author best known for his semi-autobiographical novels about living in Provence.
1945 – Joan Silber, American novelist and short-story writer.
1947 – Kat Martin, American romance novelist who also writes under the pen names Kathy Lawrence and Kasey Marx.
1948 – Laurence Yep, Newbery Award-winning Chinese-American author of novels for children and teens.
1949 – Harry Turtledove, American novelist known for his historical fiction, alternate history, science fiction, and fantasy.
1957 – Mona Simpson, American novelist and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist who first met her brother, the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, when she was 25 years old.
1978 – Diablo Cody, American author and Oscar-winning screenwriter.
