I follow a lot of my peers on Twitter, as I’m sure we all do. In the last few weeks I’ve noticed birthday acknowledgments of literary greats like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler. This prompted me to look up other authors born in July, like me 🙂 The list includes people like JK Rowling, Emily Bronte, Aldous Huxley, Cormac McCarthy, and the author of the “book” for West Side Story, Arthur Laurents (one of my favorite musicals of all time). Who knew it was such a banner month? Which authors were born the same month as you? Tracee: At the top of the August list is Dorothy Parker! She and I are joined by Ray Bradbury, Conrad Aiken, Herman Melville, Isabel Allende, PD James, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Guy de Maupassant, Wendell Berry (Kentucky born so I’m extra happy about this), Alfred Lord Tennyson, Daniel Keyes, Thomas De
Quincey, Stieg Larsson, Georgette Heyer, Charles Bukowski, Annie Prouix, CS Forester, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Goethe and my personal hero, Leo Tolstoy! We Leos are a proud and, I suppose it’s fair to say, prolific and diverse bunch. Michele: Fun question, Robin. I’m not sure whether I should start with Stephen King or Agatha Christie. Then there’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Mary Oliver, Roald Dahl, Truman Capote, D.H. Lawrence, Ken Kesey, Leo Tolstoy, T.S. Eliot, and Upton Sinclair. Not to forget George R.R. Martin, Phyllis Whitney, Ann Beattie O.Henry, James Fenimore Cooper, Fawn Brodie, Robert Benchley, Jane Smiley, and Fannie Flagg. Honestly, with all of those September birthday parties, I barely get a word written! Tracee: Michele, note that Leo Tolstoy makes the list for both August 28 and September 9 because the Russian Empire changed its calendar! Yeah! He deserves two months, mine and yours.
Michele: We’ll just have two parties for him 🙂 Tracee: Likely this is what Leo would expect! Robin: Geez September sounds awesome! And here I was feeling so pleased with July… Alison: This is a fun question! For February: James Joyce, Ina Garten (love her cookbooks!), Gertrude Stein, Betty Friedan, Charles Dickens, Sinclair Lewis, Jules Verne, John Grisham, Alice Walker, Boris Pasternak, Judy Blume, Matt Groening, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Anaïs Nin, Chuck Palahniuk, Victor Hugo, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Oh, and John Steinbeck. Alexia: I had to look this up:
James Herriot (1916)Frank Herbert (1920)Elmore Leonard (1925)Virgil (70 BC)Roxane Gay (1974)Oscar Wilde (1854)Ursula K. Le Guin (1929)Carrie Fisher (1956)Augusten Burroughs (1965)Zadie Smith (1975)Dylan Thomas (1914)John Keats (1795). Robin: I sense a theme about your sense of humor 😉 Cate: This is from Bookish… edited by me: Do you share a birthday with your favorite author? Here, we take a look at novelists, poets, journalists, and other writers born during the month of December.Elizabeth Berg (1948)George Saunders (1958)Ann Patchett (1963)Joseph Conrad (1857)Willa Cather (1873)Noam Chomsky (1928)
Emily Dickinson (1830)Gustave Flaubert (1821)Jane Austen (1775)Donna Tartt (1963)Mary Higgins Clark (1927)Stephenie Meyer (1973)Henry Miller (1891)Jean Toomer (1894)David Sedaris (1956)Rudyard Kipling (1865)Nicholas Sparks (1965) Susan: Alexia, I’m October too! I’d add in Graham Greene, John Le Carre and Elmore Leonard. Paula: I was born in March, just like Albert Einstein. We’re Pisces, the dreamers. My fellow fish include three of my favorite writers: Alice Hoffman, Dr. Suess, and John Updike. How about you, dear readers? What literary luminaries were born the same month as you?
