JANUARY LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of January authors here.)Featured Authors
Carl Sandburg, Illinois poet and Lincoln biographer, 6 Jan. 1878 - 22 July 1967
Sandburg is probably best known for his poem about fog (which 'comes on little cat feet'), or for his characterisations of Chicago ('Hog butcher for the world'), but it's for his biography of Abraham Lincoln (the Prairie Years, in 1926, and the War Years, 1939) that he won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize. An overview of Sandburg's life and work is available online, and another overview at Poetry Foundation, along with many of his poems; his Chicago poems (through Bartleby), info about Sandburg's home through the National Park Service website, and Modern American Poetry's Sandburg page, with a biography, essays, and poems.
[John] Robinson Jeffers, U.S. poet and playwright, 10 Jan. 1887 - 20 Jan. 1962
Jeffers was born in Pittsburgh, studied forestry, medicine, and other subjects in California, Washington, and Zurich colleges, and settled in 1919 in California, where he and his family built a house in Carmel. The constant theme of his poetry is mankind's worthlessness and nature's beauty and strength. Works include Tamar and Other Poems (1924), Roan Stallion (1925), Cawdor and Other Poems (1928), Dear Judas and Other Poems (1929), Descent to the Dead (1931), Thurso's Landing and Other Poems (1932), Give Your Heart to the Hawks (1933), Solstice and Other Poems (1935), The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948), and Hungerfield and Other Poems, which won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize. Some of his poetry is still being put to music and played at annual festivals. He also adapted two of Euripides' tragedies for the modern stage.
The Jeffers Studies website offers biographical background on Jeffers, tips on teaching Jeffers, a chronology, book reviews, bibliography, and more. The Poetry Foundation also has a page of Jeffers; the Academy of American Poets has a biographical sketch and some bibliography for Jeffers as well; and Modern American Poets provides information on Jeffers' life and career, a chronology, and criticism of poems.
Zora Neale Hurston, African-American novelist, 7 Jan. 1903 - 28 Jan. 1960
Born in Eatonville, FL, Hurston became part of the Harlem Renaissance, the black literati in New York City. Besides being a writer of novels (Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, Mules and Men, etc.) and short stories, she was also a folklorist who travelled to Latin American and the Caribbean to learn more about her roots, and she received degrees from Howard University and Barnard, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. Yet, she spent most of her life in Florida and died there in a welfare home in 1960. The New York Times' article "Zora Neale Hurston's Florida" (March 2010) is worth a read. The writer Alice Walker resurrected her works and interest in her in the 1970s.
Hurston's official website offers biography, chronology, a bibliography, news, book group guide linkes, a section for teachers, and links to other sources. The University of Central Florida, which holds her digital archives, has sections on biography, bibliography, audio and video, criticism, and teaching resources. Voices from the Gap has a good overview of Hurston's life and career (pdf).The PAL: Perspectives in American Literature website offers some study questions about Hurston's work, as well as a bibliography and brief biography. "Cooking with Zora Neale Hurston," at the Paris Review (Nov. 2017), is interesting.
Other January Birthdays:
- Jan 1
- Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714; d.1780)
- Anglo-Irish novelist (born Oxfordshire) Maria Edgeworth (1767, some sources say 1768; d.1849), whose work, including Castle Rackrent (1800) and Ormond (1817) presented lively tales of Irish life
- English poet Arthur Hugh Clough (1819; d.1861), whose first and best-known poem was 'The Bothie of Toberna-Vuolich'
- Scottish classicist and anthropologist Sir James [George] Frazer (1854; d.1941), who wrote The Golden Bough, 2 vols. 1890/12 vols. 1911-15)
- Mexican novelist Mariano Azuela (1873; d.1952), best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, including The Under Dogs (1916);
- English novelist and Ivory-Merchant film muse E[dward] M[organ] Forster (1879; d.1970), whose novels, including A Room with a View (1908), Howard's End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924), pit honest emotion against the acceptable conventions of society
- NYC-born recluse J[erome] D[avid] Salinger (1919;d.2010), author of Catcher in the Rye among others
- Senegalese novelist and screenwriter Sembene Ousmane (1923; d.2007), renowned for his films and novels addressing social wrongs in post-colonial Africa
- British children's book author Jean Ure (1943)
- Jan 2
- Philip Morin Freneau (1752; d.1832), American poet and political gazette editor (born NYC of French Huguenot family), the first poet to use themes from American nature, anticipating the English romantics
- Abdülhak Hâmid Tarhan (1852; d.1937), Turkish romantic poet and playwright
- Oklahoma native, African American historian, biographer, and essayist John Hope Franklin (1915; d.2009), whose 1947 From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans is still considered the standard text on African American history
- NYC poet and novelist Robert Nathan (1894; d.1985), wrote Portrait of Jennie (1940)
- Russian-born scientist and sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov (1920; d.1992)
- NYC-born writer of young adult novels Jan[ice] Slepian (1921; d.2016)
- another NYC-born novelist, and short story writer, Leonard Michaels (1933; d.2003)
- German-born novelist Leonard B. Scott (1948)
- Jan 3
- Roman author, essayist, and poet [Marcus Tullius] Cicero (106 BC; d.43 BC)
- London author and playwright Douglas William Jerrold (1803; d.1857)
- Scottish dramatist James Bridie, pseudonym of Osborne Henry Mavor (1888; d.1951)
- South African fantasy writer J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien (1892; d.1973)
- French novelist and essayist Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893; d.1945)
- short-lived Danish poet and resistance fighter Morten Nielsen (1922; d.1944)
- Grace Edwards (1933; d.2020), Harlem mystery writer and former director of the Harlem Writers Guild
- Jan 4
- German librarian and philologist, and, with his brother Wilhelm, collector of Grimm's fairy tales (1812-1815), Jakob Ludwig Carl Grimm (1785; d.1863)
- Maine native, painter and writer Marsden Hartley (1877;d.1943)
- politically radical American writer, born NYC, Max Eastman (1883;d.1969)
- A[lfred] E[dgar] Coppard (1878;d.1957), English poet and short story writer
- Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer C[yril] L[ionel] R[obert] James (1901;d.1989)
- Jan 5
- Count Miklós Zrínyi (1620;d.1664), Hungarian poet
- [K]hristo Botev (1848;d.1876), short-lived Bulgarian poet and revolutionary
- Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921; d.1990), Swiss playwright and novelist
- Pennsylvania-born poet W[illiam] D[e Witt] Snodgrass (1926; d.2009), who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1959
- Kentucky-born Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Kinloch Massie III (1929; d.2019), "who wrote gripping, tautly narrated and immensely popular books on giants of Russian history," including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and the last Romanovs, Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra, in Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), as well as a book about his own son's hemophilia, Journey (1975)
- Italian novelist and critic Umberto Eco (1932; d.2016)
- Kenyan novelist, dramatist, and critic Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938) aka James T. Ngugi, a significant East African writer
- Jan 6
- Besides Carl Sandburg, above,
- Khalil Gibran (1883; d.1931), Lebanese mystic poet (birthdates also listed as Dec. 6 and April 10), famous for The Prophet)
- Icelandic poet Tómas Guðmundsson (1901; d.1983)
- American poet (MA) John Holmes (1904;1962)
- South African Zulu poet, novelist, and educator Benedict Wallet Vilakazi (1906; d.1947)
- Nebraska-born novelist, short story writer, and photographer Wright Morris (1910; d.1998), who wrote Love Among Cannibals
- English writer and interpreter of Zen Buddhism Alan Watts (1915; d.1973)
- E[dgar] L[awrence] Doctorow (1931; d.2015), NYC novelist, authored Ragtime and Billy Bathgate among others
- American humanist and explorer of the natural world and human culture, Barry Lopez (1945; d. 2020; born Barry Holstun Brennan), who wrote essays, short stories, non-fiction and fiction books, including Arctic Dreams (1986), for which he won the National Book Award
- Jan 7
- Besides Zora Neale Hurston, above,
- English political author James Harrington (1611; some sources say Jan. 3;d.1677; author of The Commonwealth of Oceana)
- French Roman Catholic socialist writer and poet Charles Péguy (1873;d.1914; authored essay 'Sinners and Saints')
- British zoologist and writer (born India) Gerald Malcolm Durrell (1925;d.1995; brother of Lawrence Durrell)
- NYC-born Exorcist author William Peter Blatty (1928; d.2017)
- Jan 8
- Su Tung Po, also called Su Shi, Chinese poet, essayist, calligrapher, gastronome, painter, pharmacologist, and politician (1037; d.1101)
- Spanish Baroque writer, philosopher and scholar Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601; d.1658)
- English novelist [William] Wilkie Collins (1824; d.1889), whose most popular works are a mystery, The Woman in White (1860), and The Moonstone (1868), forerunner of the modern detective novel
- Mexican poet Francisco González Bocanegra (1824; d.1861), who wrote the lyrics for the Mexican National Anthem (1853)
- English novelist [Margaret] Storm Jameson (1891;d.1986)
- British thriller and occult novelist Dennis Yates Wheatley (1897; d.1977), known as 'The Prince of Thriller Writers'
- [Alfred] Charles Tomlinson, CBE (1927; d.2015), British poet, translator, and artist
- Prolific South Korean poet Ko Un (1933)
- American novelist Alexandra Ripley, née Braid (1934; d.2004) who wrote Scarlett (1991), the sequel to Gone with the Wind
- English physicist and author Stephen [William] Hawking (1942; d.2018), whose 1988 A Brief History of Time: From Big Bang to Black Holes was a bestseller
- American fantasy writer (born Illinois) Terence Dean 'Terry' Brooks (1944)
- Jan 9
- English poet and author of the first history of English poetry, Thomas Warton (1728; d.1790; selected poems of Wharton)
- English comedic playwright Thomas William Robertson (1829;d.1871)
- Chicago realistic novelist Henry B[lake] Fuller (1857; d.1929)
- Karel Čapek (1890; d.1938), Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist, authored the play R.U.R.
- French writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908; d.1986)
- American novelist Anne Rivers Siddons (1936; d.2019), who wrote books set in the South, including Peachtree Road (1988), Outer Banks (1991), and Low Country (1992), and a few set in New England, including Up Island (1997) and Colony (1998).
- Jan 10
- Besides Robinson Jeffers, above,
- Irish poet, critic, and essayist Aubrey Thomas Hunt de Vere (1814; d.1902)
- Japanese novelist, essayist, and haiku poet Ozaki Kōyō, aka Tokutaro Ozaki (1867, per Gale's Contemporary Authors Online; birthdate also listed variously as Jan. 10, 1868, and Jan. 28, 1869; d.1903)
- Vicente Huidobro, born Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (1893; d.1948), Chilean poet known for promoting the avant-garde movement in Chile and for creating Creacionismo
- Detroit-born poet Philip Levine (1928; d.2015)
- Indiana-born poet Jared Carter (1939)
- Jan 11
- NYC native, philosopher, psychologist, and older brother of novelist Henry James, William James (1842; d.1910), who penned The Principles of Psychology (1890)
- Kentucky-born novelist Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice (1870; d.1942), who wrote the bestselling Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901)
- Utah-born novelist, historian, critic Bernard Augustine De Voto (1897; d.1955), known for works on Mark Twain and histories of the U.S. west
- Alan Paton (1903; d.1988), South African writer, authored Cry, the Beloved Country
- Manfred B. Lee (1905; d.1971), co-creator, with his cousin Frederic Dunnay, of Ellery Queen
- American performer and novelist Helen Howe (1905; d.1975), born Boston
- Diana Gabaldon (1952), American author, known for the Outlander series of novels, merging historical fiction, romance, mystery, adventure, science fiction/fantasy
- Jan 12
- Andreas Alciato (1492; d.1550), known as Alciati, Italian author and jurist
- Charles Perrault (1628; d.1703), French lawyer and writer of Mother Goose tales, such as 'Puss in Boots' and 'Little Red Riding Hood'
- Edmund Burke (1729, some sources say 1730; d.1797), Irish politician, orator, philosopher, author of many political pamphlets and essays
- Jack London (1876; d.1916), San Francisco writer and socialist
- Kentucky-born African-American poet Margaret Esse Danner (1915; d.1986), many of whose poems focus on Africa, which she visited in 1966
- Japanese novelist (born Kyoto) Haruki Murakami (1949), who wrote Hear the Wind Sing and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, among others
- Los Angeles-born detective writer Walter Mosley (1952)
- Jan 13
- French dramatist Prosper Jolyot, Sieur de Crébillon (1674, birthdate also sometimes as 15 Feb.; d.1762), whose licentious plays portrayed the depravity of high Parisian culture
- Eduard von Bauernfeld (1802; d.1890), Viennese comedic playwright
- Massachusetts-born rags-to-riches author Horatio Alger Jr (1832; d.1899)
- New Jersey native Carolyn Heilbrun (1926; d. 2003), aka Amanda Cross, non-fiction author and mystery writer, suicide
- British children's writer and Paddington Bear creator [Thomas] Michael Bond (1926; d.2017)
- Nigerian novelist and short story writer Flora Nwapa (1931; d.1993), one of the first African women to publish in English
- California-born mystery and sci-fi writer Ron[ald Joseph] Goulart (1933)
- Bright Lights, Big City author Jay McInerney (1955)
- Jan 14
- Zacharias Topelius (1818; d.1898), Finnish historic novelist
- French writer Pierre Loti (1850; d.1923)
- Dr. Dolittle-creator Hugh Lofting (1886; d.1947), born Berkshire, England
- Thornton Waldo Burgess (1874; d.1965), children's writer
- Chicago-born novelist John dos Passos (1896; d.1970), whose first novel was One Man's Initiation -- 1917 but who is best known for his U.S.A. trilogy (1930-1936)
- St. Louis native, author and New Yorker essayist Emily Hahn (1905; d.1997)
- Nebraska-born novelist and non-fiction writer Tillie Olsen (1913; d.2007)
- African American publisher, editor, and poet, and the first Poet Laureate of Detroit, Dudley [Felker] Randall (1914; d.2000), whose Broadside Press provided a forum for unknown black writers
- Georgia native, novelist, essayist, playwright, and co-founder of the Harlem Writers Guild John Oliver Killens (1916; d.1987)
- Japanese novelist and martyr Yukio Mishima, pseudonym of Hiraoka Kimitake (1925; d.1970, seppuku suicide)
- American sci-fi/horror novelist and actor Thomas Tryon (1926; d.1991)
- Mahaswetah Devi (1926; d.2016), Indian Bengali fiction writer and socio-political activist
- Washington, D.C.-born novelist and short story writer Mary Robison (1949)
- Jan 15
- Jean Baptiste Poquelin aka Molière (baptised on this date, 1622; d.1673), French satirical dramatist
- gloomy Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer (1791; d.1872), who perpetuated the German classic and romantic traditions and influenced later playwrights Hauptmann and Maeterlinck
- Russian novelist and satirist Mikhail Evgrafovich [Yevgrafovich] Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826; birthdate is 27 Jan. in new calendar; d.1889)
- Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu (1850; d.1889; poems)
- Warsaw-born poet Osip Mandelstam (1891; d. 1938; poem 'Ill Day')
- Ukranian writer and propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg (1891; birthdate is 27 Jan. in new calendar; d.1967)
- Scottish poet, playwright, song- and story-writer, cartoonist, and story-teller Ivor Cutler (1923;d.2006)
- Louisiana-born novelist Ernest J. Gaines (1933; d.2019), who wrote The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, among other novels
- NYC native, writer Frank Conroy (1936; d.2005; link is to an audio interview)
- Jan 16
- Canadian poet Robert W. Service (1874; d.1958)
- Ukranian novelist and playwright Valentin Katayev, also spelled Kataev (1897; birthdate is 28 Jan. in new calendar; d.1986)
- Anthony Ivan Hecht, NYC-born poet (1923; d.2004)
- author, social and political commentator, and longtime editor of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz (1930)
- NYC author and film director Susan Sontag (1933; d.2004)
- experimental Danish poet Inger Christensen (1935; d.2009)
- Jan 17
- Spanish poet and dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600; d.1681;), known for plays including the fantasy, La Vida es sueño (Life is a dream) and El Mágico prodigioso (The Wonderful Magician), based on the life of St. Cyrian
- Boston-born Benjamin Franklin (1706; d.1790), American statesman, philosopher, scientist, printer, writer, whose (Autobiography, published 1867) reveals him to be imbued with genius and with the American spirit of idealism, practicality, and optimism
- American novelist and editor (born and died in Philadelphia), Charles Brockden Brown (1771; d.1810), 'Father of the American novel' (Gothic novel Wieland; or the Transformation, 1798)
- English novelist Anne Bronte (1820; d.1849), aka Acton Bell
- Anton Chekhov (1860; birthdate is 29 Jan. in new calendar; d.1904), Russian playwright and short-story writer, one of the great exponents of Russian realism
- London novelist [Arthur Annesley] Ronald Firbank (1886; d.1926)
- British-born Australian novelist Nevil Shute [Norway] (1899; d.1960)
- Kansas-born poet and conscientious objector William Stafford (1914; d.1993)
- Jan 18
- British thesaurus developer and physician Peter Mark Roget (1779; d.1869)
- English poet, critic, and biographer [Henry] Austin Dobson (1840; d.1921; poem 'In After Days')
- Rubén Darío (1867; d.1916), born Félix Rubén Garcia-Sarmiento, Nicaraguan poet and short-story writer
- Winnie-the-Pooh creator and mathematician A[lan] A[lexander] Milne (1882; d.1956)
- Spanish poet, literary critic, and member of the Generation of '27 Jorge Guillén [y Álvarez] (1893; d.1984)
- William Sansom (1912; d.1976), British writer of novels, short stories, and travel books
- Jan 19
- French writer Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (link in French; 1737; d. 1814; Studies of Nature)
- Boston-born horror story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809; d.1849)
- Alexander Woolcott (1887; d.1943), NJ-born American short-story writer, critic for The New Yorker magazine, member of the famed Algonquin Round Table. hosted radio show The Town Crier
- Texas-born mystery writer Patricia Highsmith nee Mary Patricia Plangman (1921; d.1995)
- Scottish/British poet George Mann MacBeth (1932; d.1992)
- English writer Julian Barnes (1946)
- Jan 20
- Maine native Nathaniel P. Willis (1806; d.1867), writer and editor of American Monthly Magazine
- English writer Richard Le Gallienne (1866; d.1947)
- Johannes V. Jensen (1873; d.1950), Danish novelist, poet, essayist, and 1944 Nobel Prize winner
- Abram Hill (1910; d.1986), American playwright, born Abraham Barrington Hill, wrote the play 'On Striver's Row' (1940)
- Joy Adamson (1910; d.1980, murder), naturalist, friend of lions, and writer of the 'Born Free' books
- Nicaraguan poet, Trappist priest, revolutionary Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (1925; d.2020)
- Japanese writer Sawako Ariyoshi (1931; d. 1984), wrote The Doctor's Wife, a novel about the rivalry between the wife and mother of Seishu Hanaoka, an Edo-era surgeon who discovered general anaesthesia
- Jan 21
- Icelandic poet, novelist, playwright, and librarian Davíð Stefánsson (1895; d.1964)
- Richard P. Blackmur (1904; d.1965), Massachusetts poet and literary critic
- Jan 22
- Sir Francis Bacon (1561; d.1626), English essayist, philosopher, historian, and statesman
- German critic and dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729; d.1781)
- René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt (1773; d.1844), prolific French dramatist
- George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale (1788; d.1824), aka Lord Byron, English romantic poet
- August Strindberg (1849; d.1912), Swedish dramatist and novelist
- poet, playwright, and long-time New Yorker poetry editor Howard Moss (1922; d.1987), who wrote the satirical and epigrammic Instant Lives (1974)
- Pittsburgh-born crime writer Joseph Wambaugh (1937)
- Jan 23
- French writer [Marie-Henri Beyle] Stendhal (1783; d.1842), author of The Red and The Black (1830) and others
- NYC-born experimental poet Louis Zukofsky (1904; d.1978)
- West Indies-born (St. Lucia) poet and playwright Derek [Alton] Walcott (1930; d.2017), who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature
- Jan 24
- British comedic playwright and poet of the Restoration Age William Congreve (1670; d. 1729), who wrote The Way of the World (1700)
- Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732; d.1799), French dramatist who authored 'The Marriage of Figaro,' 'The Barber of Seville')
- NYC-born novelist Edith Wharton (1862; d.1937), who won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, the first woman to do so, for The Age of Innocence (1920)
- British zoologist, author, and artist Desmond [John] Morris (1928), who wrote The Naked Ape (1967) and The Human Zoo (1969), among over 50 books
- Jan 25
- Scotland's national poet Robert Burns (1759; d.1796)
- W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, English novelist and poet (1874; d.1965; wrote Of Human Bondage)
- English modernist novelist and Bloomsbury member Virginia Woolf (1882; d.1941)
- NYC-born novelist Gloria Naylor (1950; d.2016), whose novel The Women of Brewster Place (1982) won the American Book Award for best first fiction
- Jan 26
- Marie Joseph Sue (1804; other birthdates given are 20 Jan and 10 Dec 1804; d.1857), aka Eugène Sue, French novelist, wrote The Mysteries of Paris (1843)
- Mary Mapes Dodge (1831; d.1905), NYC writer and poet, best known for the children's book Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865)
- NYC cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer (1929)
- Alabama-born political activist, essayist, and autobiographer Angela Yvonne Davis (1944)
- playwright Christopher Hampton (1946), born on Fayal Island in the Azores, whose adaptation of the French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses won him an Oscar in 1988
- Jan 27
- For Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826): see Jan. 15
- Lewis Carroll (1832; d.1898; lots of Carroll's texts online), born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, English poet and author of children's books, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- NYC native, songwriter and composer Jerome Kern (1885; d.1945)
- For Ilya Ehrenburg (1891): see Jan. 15
- Montreal-born novelist, journalist, and scriptwriter Mordecai Richler (1931; d.2001)
- English novelist D[onald] M[ichael] Thomas (1935)
- Missouri-born musician, political activist, folklorist, educator, novelist, children's author, "chronicler of black America" Julius [Bernard] Lester (1939; d.2018)
- Jan 28
- French novelist [Sidonie-Gabrielle Claudine] Colette (1873; d.1954; official site, in French), France's foremost female writer in her time
- For Valentin Katayev (1897): see Jan. 16
- English novelist David Lodge (1935)
- Jan 29
- Political essayist Thomas Paine (1737; d.1809)
- For Anton Chekhov (1860): see Jan. 17
- French novelist, dramatist, essayist, mystic, and 1915 Nobel winner Romain Rolland (1866; d.1945)
- Spanish (Valencian) novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867; d.1928; link also en Español)
- Edward Abbey (1927; d.1989), environmentalist U.S. writer
- Jan 30
- English politician and writer of restoration comedies, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628; d.1687)
- English critic and writer Walter S[avage] Landor (1775; d.1864), known for his hot temper and his reverence for classical writers
- Boston-born nonsense poet Gelett Burgess (1866; d.1951)
- Saul David Alinsky (1909; d.1972), Chicago writer, who wrote Reveille for Radicals
- NYC-born historian and popular history writer Barbara [Wertheim] Tuchman (1912; d.1989), winner of two Pulitzer prizes
- Shirley Hazzard (1931; d.2016), Australian/American novelist and short story writer
- Richard Brautigan (1935; d.1984, suicide), Washington-born Beat poet and novelist, who wrote Trout Fishing in America (1967)
- Kentucky-born novelist Michael Dorris (1945; d.1997, suicide), who wrote A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (1987), among other books
- Jan 31
- French-American essayist J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735; other sources say 31 Dec. 1735; d.1813), born Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, famous for Letters from an American Farmer (1782), drawing on his experience as a farmer in Orange County, N.Y.
- Ohio-born American western writer Zane Grey (1872; d.1939)
- Pennsylvania novelist and short-story writer John O'Hara (1905; d.1970)
- French-born American Trappist monk, essayist, and poet Thomas Merton (1915; d.1968), who wrote -- among many other works of autobiography, non-fiction and poetry -- the memoir The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
- New Jersey-born novelist Norman Mailer (1923; d.2007)
- Japanese novelist and 1994 Nobelist Oe Kenzaburo (1935)