1885 – Frances Parkinson Keyes, American author who wrote novels set in New England, Louisiana, and Europe, as well as books about her life as the wife of a U.S. Senator; her later works frequently featured Roman Catholic themes and beliefs. Her last name rhymes with “skies,” not “keys.”
1899 – Hart Crane, influential American modernist poet who was known for his difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious work and is considered one of the key literary figures of his generation.
1899 – Ernest Hemingway, Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize-winning American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist whose work is known for his sparse prose and gripping narratives; many of his novels, including The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms, are considered literary classics.
1903 – Yrjö Jylhä, Finnish poet and translator whose poems reflected the horrors he witnessed as an officer on the front lines of the Winter War (1939-40). His work, Kiirastuli, is generally considered the best lyrical poetry from this period in Finnish history.
1911 – Marshall McLuhan, Canadian founder of the study of media theory; he is especially ja,meremembered for his expressions “the global village” and “the media is the message.”
1914 – Suso Cecchi d’Amico, influential, award-winning Italian screenwriter and librettist.
1920 – Mohammed Dib, Algerian novelist and poet.
1921 – James Cooke Brown, American sociologist, science-fiction author, civil-rights activist, and board-game creator; he also invented the artificial language Loglan.
1933 – John Gardner, American novelist, essayist, literary critic, and professor, known for his nurturing of beginning writers and for his book Grendel, a retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view. (Not to be confused with the British John Gardner, author of spy and mystery stories.)
1943 – Tess Gallagher, American poet, essayist, and short-story writer.
1944 – Buchi Emecheta, pioneering Nigerian novelist and children’s author who divorced her husband after he read and burned her first novel; her work often drew on her own life to champion the rights of girls and women.
1955 – Véronique Tadjo, Ivory Coast poet, novelist, children’s author, and artist whose work reflects a pan-African outlook.
1956 – Michael Connelly, American author of detective novels and crime fiction.
1957 – Yū Asagiri, award-winning Japanese novelist, manga writer, and artist; her real name was Takano Yuriko.
1966 – Sarah Waters, Welsh novelist whose Victorian novels usually feature lesbian protagonists.
1966 – Tsering Woeser, Tibetan-Chinese writer, blogger, poet, essayist, and activist.
1975 – Christopher Barzak, American novelist and short-story writer whose novel The Love We Share Without Knowing was a 2009 Nebula nominee.
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