1607 – Christian Keymann (also spelled Keimann), Czech-born German poet, writer, and hymnwriter.
1607 – Giovanni Francesco Loredan (or Loredano), Italian Venetian writer, novelist, essayist, history writer, librettist, editor, and politician; as founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti and a member of many other academies, he had close contact with most of the key scholars of his day and played a decisive role in the creation of modern opera.
1770 – Juan Bautista Arriaza, Spanish poet, writer, and diplomat.
1807 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, U.S. poet, author, educator, and translator; one of the Fireside Poets, he is best known for “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song of Hiawatha.”
1812 – Samo Chalupka, Slovak writer and Romantic poet, and translator; his works includes themes of Slovak nature, patriotism, and loyalty to his homeland, and often incorporated Slovak folk songs.
1814 – Maria Susanna Kübler, Swiss writer, teacher, and translator who is remembered for her housekeeping guides and cookbooks.
1818 – Joseph Jenkins, Welsh farmer, diarist, and poet who in his 50s suddenly abandoned his home and large family to seek his fortune in Australia.
1821 – Ausonio Franchi (real name Cristoforo Bonavino), Italian writer, philosopher, journalist, editor, theologian, and Catholic priest.
1835 – Richard Garnett, British writer, poet, biographer, scholar, and librarian.
1837 – Francesca Alexander, Tuscan-based U.S. expatriate illustrator, author, folklorist, and translator.
1838 – Pavel Dmitrievich Golohvastov, Russian writer, historian, philologist, publicist, and Slavophile.
1849 – Václav Beneš Třebízský, Czech writer, historical novelist, children’s writer, and priest.
1850 – Laura E. Richards, Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. biographer, author, poet, and children’s writer; she is best known for her biography of her mother, Julia Ward Howe, the poet, women’s suffragist, and abolitionist who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
1851 – Manuel Magri, Maltese anthropologist, archaeologist, ethnographer, writer, folklorist, educator, and priest; he is considered one of Malta’s pioneers in the field of archaeology.
1856- Mary Kathleen Lyttelton (nee Clive), British writer, editor, activist, and suffragist who devoted much of her life to fighting to improve women’s lives; in her book Women and Their Work she argued that education for women was “essential to their true progress,” and that voting rights where essential to that education.
1857 – Agnes Mary Frances Robinson (known as Agnes-Marie-François Darmesteter after her first marriage and as Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux after her second) British and French poet, novelist, essayist, literary critic, and translator.
1859 – Bertha Pappenheim, Austrian-Jewish writer, novelist, poet, playwright, children’s writer, short-story writer, feminist, and social pioneer who was the founder of the Jewish Women’s Association (Jüdischer Frauenbund). Her work was published under her own name, anonymously, or under the pseudonym Paul Berthold. But she is perhaps better known for her medical history; under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of neurophysiologist Josef Breuer’s best-documented patients because of Sigmund Freud’s writing about her case.
1867 – George Diamandy, Romanian writer, autobiographer, librettist, diarist, children’s author, diplomat, sociologist, anthropologist, and archaeologist.
1873 – Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Guatemalan literary critic, writer, journalist, and diplomat who was wrongly accused of betraying World War I German spy Mata Hari and giving her to the French.
1880 – Angelina Weld Grimké, U.S. African-American poet and playwright who was an important forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance; her aunts Angelina and Sarah Grimké were prominent white abolitionists despite being raised in a slave-owning family.
1884 – Alexandre Arnoux, French screenwriter, writer, poet, playwright, translator, and science-fiction writer.
1885 – Ellen Rydelius, Swedish writer, journalist, travel writer, cookbook author, and translator who is most remembered for translating major Russian works into Swedish, including Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.
1887 – Alés Harun, Belarusian writer, poet, playwright, lyricist, opinion journalist, and writer
1888 – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., U.S. social historian and author who was father of author Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
1900 – Keiji Nishitani, Japanese writer, philosopher, poet, and university teacher whose work had a religious and subjective bent that has been associated with the existentialists and mystics.
1901 – Ali Valiyev, Azerbaijani prose writer, historian, editor, journalist, and short-story writer who is considered one of the outstanding figures of the Azerbaijani national literature.
1902 – John Steinbeck, Pulitzer Prize-winning and Nobel Prize-winning U.S. writer of novels, short stories, and nonfiction; his “realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception” are considered classics of Western literature. Much of his work is set in California and explores themes of fate and injustice.
1904 – James T. Farrell, U.S. novelist, poet, and short-story writer, best known for his Studs Lonigan trilogy.
1904 – Jalu Kurek, award-winning Polish poet and novelist who was part of the Kraków avant-garde movement.
1910 – Peter DeVries, U.S. novelist and editor known for his satiric wit, especially when writing about religion.
1912 – Lawrence Durrell, expatriate Indian-born British writer whose most famous work was his Alexandria quartet. His brother Gerald and sister Margaret were also authors; Gerald’s My Family and Other Animals and its sequels detailed the family’s life on the Greek isle of Corfu in the 1930s and was the basis for the television series, The Durrells in Corfu.
1912 – Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar (popularly known by his pen name, Kusumagraj, and also known as Vi. Va. Shirwadkar), eminent and prolific Indian Marathi poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, and short-story writer who wrote about freedom, justice, and emancipation of the deprived.
1913 – Irwin Shaw, U.S. novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short-story writer.
1921 – Germaine Simon, Luxembourg physician, novelist, and short-story writer who is best remembered for her historical novel Lucilinburhuc, which traced the history of Luxembourg from the Stone Age to the present.
1925 – Amir-Hossein Aryanpour, influential Iranian writer, translator, sociologist, linguist, lexicographer, and academic who wrote numerous books and articles on sociology, philosophy, and literature.
1926 – Elisabeth Borchers, German writer, poet, translator, literary editor, and children’s writer.
1931 – Kazuko Shiraishi, Canadian-born Japanese Modernist poet, editor, and translator; she has been called “the Allen Ginsberg of Japan.”
1933 – Armando Baptista-Bastos, Portuguese author, journalist, and writer.
1934 – N. Scott Momaday, U.S. Native American (Kiowa) author whose novel House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1934 – Ralph Nader, U.S. author, lecturer, political activist, and occasional presidential candidate whose work centers on environmentalism, consumer protection, and government reform; his work has been credited with the passage of several consumer protection laws, and he has been named repeatedly to lists of the most influential Americans.
1935 – Gulzar Singh Sandhu, prominent, award-winning Indian Punjabi-language journalist, editor, columnist, and short-story writer.
1935 – Uri Shulevitz, Caldecott Medal-winning U.S. writer and illustrator of children’s books.
1938 – Konstantin Vasilioglu, Ukrainian writer, poet, fairy-tale writer, educator, and lexicographer.
1942 – Christine Haidegger, influential, award-winning Austrian writer, poet, novelist, playwright, travel writer, short-story writer, and memoirist whose work revealed snapshots of seasons, nature and life, and existential experiences such as grief, loneliness, time, and transience, using unpretentious language characterized by its apparent simplicity and careful imagery.
1942 – Charlayne Hunter-Gault, U.S. journalist, broadcaster, foreign correspondent, and civil-rights activist.
1944 – Ken Grimwood, World Fantasy Award-winning U.S. author of fantasy fiction; he sometimes wrote under the name Alan Cochran.
1947 – Sonia Manzano Vela, award-winning Ecuadorian writer, poet, short-story writer, and pianist.
1956 – Meena Keshwar Kamal, Afghani writer, poet, politician, journalist, social worker, essayist, and revolutionary political activist who founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA); she was assassinated in 1987.
1964 – Chi Zijian, Chinese novelist best known for her book The Last Quarter of the Moon.
1965 – Marzena Broda, Polish poet, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter.
1970 – Michael A. Burstein, U.S. science-fiction novelist and short-story writer who is also a columnist, journalist, science teacher, textbook editor, town council member, and president of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet, which goes by the acronym SP3.
1972 – Pius Adebola Adesanmi, Nigerian-born writer, satirist, poet, columnist, essayist, nonfiction author, professor, and literary critic who was living in Canada; many of his writings focused on the absurd in the Nigerian social and political system. He died in 2019, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off.
1972 – Maja Lidia Korwin-Kossakowska-Grzedowicz, award-winning Polish fantasy writer, novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and archeologist who is best known for using angel themes in her work. Her husband, Jaroslaw Grzedowicz, is also a fantasy writer.
1982 – Tehila Hakimi, award-winning Israeli poet, editor, author, and graphic novelist who is a key member of the Mizrahi Ars Poetica movement.
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