JUNE LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of June authors here.)Featured Authors
William Butler Yeats, Irish poet, June 13, 1865 - Jan. 28 1939
Extensive biography of Yeats from 1938 "Atlantic Monthly;" and another bio from Nobelprize.org. Yeats' poetry, info on the summer school, and a map of Sligo from the Yeats Society in Sligo, Ireland, which offers poems related to geographic location, like The Lake Isle of Innisfree.
For text of many Yeats' poems, see the web site The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, maintained by the Univ. of Adelaide Library.
Yeats has a page -- with bio, poems, and links -- on The Academy of American Poets' Find-A-Poet page.
Pearl S. Buck, writer and humanitarian, June 26, 1892 - March 1973
'One of the most renowned, interesting, and controversial figures ever to influence American and Chinese cultural and literary history.' The Pearl Buck page at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, contains a biography, bibliography, photos, and excerpts from Buck's works; Pearl S. Buck International, a child assistance/sponsorship and adoption agency; and the Nobelprize.org page has a biography, her banquet speech and Nobel lecture, and other links.
Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery novelist and Christian writer, June 13, 1893 - Dec. 17, 1957
Biography and links from the Dorothy L. Sayers Society and a list of Sayers' works.
Athol Fugard, South African anti-apartheid playwright, June 11, 1932 -
Fugard was born in Cape Province, South Africa. He worked as a crew member on a steamer ship and as a journalist before co-founding a theatre in South Africa. In 1961, he was recognised for his play The Blood Knot, and he has since written many more plays, which often address apartheid and other political issues, as well as novels and teleplays. Plays include Boesman and Lena (1969), The Island (1972), Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972), A Lesson from Aloes (1978), Master Harold...And the Boys (1982), The Road to Mecca (1984), A Place with the Pigs (1987), My Children! My Africa! (1989), Playland (1992), Valley Song (1995), and The Captain's Tiger (1999).
On-line information: biography of Fugard; summary of Fugard's play, The Road to Mecca; notes on Fugard' play 'Master Harold' ... and the Boys.
Nikki Giovanni, American poet & civil rights promoter, June 7, 1943 -
Nikki Giovanni's page at Virginia Tech Univ.; her official home page, with bio, poetry, essays and interviews, children's poetry, records and CDs, awards, degrees, etc.; Giovanni's page on The Academy of American Poets' site; her page at Voices from the Gaps, with bio, biblio, criticism and links; text of Giovanni's poems Nikki-Rosa, Ego-Trippin, and Choices.
Other June Birthdays
- June 1
- Canadian lyric poet William Wilfred Campbell (1861)
- John Masefield, English poet (1878)
- Nebraskan-born historian and writer Christopher Lasch (1932; d.1994)
- Australian novelist Colleen McCullough (1937), author of The Thorn Birds (1977
- June 2:
- Comte Donatien-Alphonse-Fransois de Sade, aka the Marquis de Sade (1740)
- Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet (1840; d.1928), well-known for Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874; d.1967)
- Danish poet/novelist and 1917 Nobel prize winner Karl Gjellerup (1857; d.1919)
- African American short-story writer, novelist, and publisher Dorothy West, born Boston (1907; d.1998), whose journal Challenge published many of the Harlem Renaissance writers
- British comic and mystery novelist Barbara Pym (1913; d.1980)
- Illinois-born novelist Carol Shields (1935;d.2003), who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries
- June 3
- Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926; d.1997)
- Texas novelist Larry McMurtry (1936), author of The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove, among others
- June 4
- Haitian poet, novelist, and short story writer Jacques Roumain (1907; d.1944)
- June 5
- English novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884; d.1969)
- Andalusian poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca (1898; d.1936)
- the best busy children's author ever Richard Scarry (1919; d.1994)
- Irish novelist Christy Brown (1932)
- novelist Margaret Drabble (1939)
- best-selling Welsh spy novelist Ken Follett (1949)
- June 6
- French playwright and the 'father of French tragedy,' Pierre Corneille (1606; d.1684), who wrote many comedies but was most famous for his tragedy, El Cid (1636 or 1637), which was based on Guillén de Castro's Las Mocedades del Cid
- Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin (1799; d.1837)
- American playwright, actor, and inventor Steele MacKaye (1842)
- German novelist and 1929 Nobelist Thomas Mann (1875; d.1955)
- Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, novelist, and children's author Maxine Kumin (1925)
- U.S. children's author Cynthia Rylant (1954)
- June 7
-
Besides Giovanni, above,
- R[ichard] D[odderidge] Blackmore (1825; d.1900), English novelist who wrote Lorna Doone
- Irish novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899; d.1973)
- African-American poet, Kansas-born and Chicago-raised, Gwendolyn Brooks (1917; d.2000)
- June 8
- Charles Reade (1814; d.1884), English dramatist and novelist, author of The Cloister and the Hearth
- Belgian-born Marguerite Yourcenar (1903; d.1987), who wrote Memoirs of Hadrian
- American mystery writer Sara Paretsky (1947)
- June 9
- American playwright, actor, and collaborator of Washington Irving's, John Howard Payne (1791; d.1852)
- Austrian novelist and pacifist Bertha von Suttner (1843; d.1914)
- S[amuel] N[athaniel] Behrman (1893; d.1973), Mass. playwright
- prolific British children's book author and publisher Kate Petty aka Katharine Chapman (1951; d.2007)
- forensic mystery writer Patricia Cornwell (1956)
- June 10
- Russian writer Immanuel Velikovsky (1895; d.1979)
- playwright Terence Rattigan (1911; d.1977)
- American-Jewish author Saul Bellow (1915)
- children's author Maurice Sendak (1928)
- June 11
-
Besides Fugard, above,
- English Jacobean playwright and poet Ben Jonson (1572; d.1637), who penned the comedies Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist (1610), among others
- Japanese novelist, first Japanese to win Nobel prize for literature, in 1968, Yasunari Kawabata (1899; d.1972)
- Argentinian philosophical novelist/critic Leopoldo Marechal (1900; d.1970)
- Virginia writer William Styron (1925; d.2006), who wrote Sophie's Choice)
- June 12
- Charles Kingsley, English novelist, poet and clergyman (1819; d.1875), author of westerns and the well-known children's story The Water Babies (1863), and one of the few clergymen of his time to accept Darwin's theory of evolution
- Heidi author Johanna Spyri (1829; d.1901)
- American poet, author, and illustrator Djuna Barnes (1892; d.1982)
- diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929; d.1945)
- novelist Rona Jaffe (1932)
- June 13
-
Besides Yeats and Sayers, above,
- English novelist and diarist Frances (Fanny) [Madame d'Arblay] Burney (1752; d.1840), creator of the novel of manners whose plot revolves on the experiences of an innocent and virtuous girl entering society
- Illinois poet, 1940 Pulitzer prize winner, and longtime Columbia Univ. faculty member Mark Van Doren (1894; d.1972)
- June 14
- Uncle Tom's Cabin writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811; d.1896)
- John Bartlett (1820; d.1905), Masachusetts-born editor, of Bartlett's Quotations fame
- José Carlos Mariátegui (1894; d.1930), Peruvian essayist
- Scottish poet, editor, and novelist Ruthven Todd (1914; d.1978)
- novelist Jerzy Kosinski (1933; d.1991)
- Pittsburgh-raised African American novelist John Edgar Wideman (1941) who won the PEN/Faulkner Award for both Philadelphia Fire (1990) and Sent For You Yesterday (1983)
- June 15
- English poet and dramatist Thomas Randolph (1605; d.1635)
- Dutch novelist Maria Dermoût (1888; d.1962)
- poet and dance critic for the New York Times Jack Anderson (1935; d.2005)
- Liverpudlian creator of the Redwall series Brian Jacques (1939; d.2011)
- Xaviera Hollander, author of The Happy Hooker (1942/1943?)
- June 16
- John Cleveland, British metaphysical poet (1613; d.1658)
- white-man-turned-black, John Howard Griffin, U.S. photographer and author of Black Like Me (1920; d.1980)
- Swiss-born (lived New York City) young adult novelist and Gothic mystery writer Isabelle Holland (1920; d.2002)
- Love Story author Erich Segal (1937)
- novelist Joyce Carol Oates (1938)
- June 17
- Dutch writer and poet Everhardus Johannes Potgieter (1808; d.1875)
- Henry Lawson, Australian short story and ballad writer (1867; d.1922)
- Florida-born poet, diplomat, and African-American anthologist James Weldon Johnson (1871; d.1938 in Maine)
- [Mark] James Cameron, foreign correspondent (1911; d.1985)
- novelist and journalist John Hersey (born 1914 in China; d.1993)
- June 18
- Russian novelist and travel writer Ivan [Alexandrovich] Goncharov (1812; d.1891), whose greatest work is Oblomov (1859), a satire on Old World Russia
- Alexander Balloch Grosart, British author and editor (1827; d.1899)
- Philip Barry, U.S. dramatist (1896; d.1949), who wrote The Philadelphia Story
- American Jewish financial writer Sylvia Porter (1913; d.1991)
- Alabama-born novelist Gail Godwin (1937)
- Michigan-born children's book illustrator and storyteller Chris Van Allsburg (1949)
- June 19
- French philosopher and writer of the Pensees, Blaise Pascal (1623; d.1662)
- Laura Z. Hobson (1900; d.1986), NYC-born novelist, wrote Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which was made into a movie and won an Academy Award for Best Picture
- Japanese writer and suicide Dazai Osamu, born Tsushima Shuji (1909; d.1948)
- Scottish poet Tom Buchan (1931; d.1995)
- Alabama-born fiction writer and reporter Tobias Wolff (1945)
- exiled Indian (born Bombay) writer Salman Rushdie (1947)
- June 20
- Nicholas Rowe, English dramatist and poet (1674; d.1718)
- British writer, poet, and editor Anna Barbauld (1743; d.1825)
- Cleveland-born Charles W[addell] Chesnutt (1858; d.1932), the first important African-American novelist
- Mississippi native and longtime Chicago Public Library system librarian, educator, and biographer Charlemae Hill Rollins (1897; d.1979), who worked to end the stereotyped portrayal of blacks in children's literature
- New Orleans-born playwright Lillian Hellman (1905; d.1984; Hellman's FBI file)
- Indian poet, novelist, and travel writer Vikram Seth (1952)
- June 21
- William Edmondstoune Aytoun, Scottish poet and humourist (1813; d.1865)
- Brazilian novelist and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839; d.1908), considered the foremost Brazilian man of letters at the end of the 19th century
- existentialist philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre (1905; d.1980)
- Seattle-born novelist Mary McCarthy (1912; d.1989)
- Kentucky native, fiction writer and journalist Ann Allen Shockley (1927), whose fiction portrays the difficulties of the black lesbian experience
- French novelist Francoise Sagan (born Françoise Quoirez) (1935; d.2004)
- Virginia-born, sometime Maine resident, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Henry Taylor (1942)
- British novelist and Booker Prize Winner Ian McEwan (1948)
- June 22
- Sir Henry Rider Haggard, English romantic novelist (1856; d.1925)
- German novelist Erich Maria Remarque aka Erich Paul Remark (1898; d.1970)
- NJ-born author and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906; d.2001)
- California native, African-American sci-fi novelist Octavia E. Butler (1947; d.2006), winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards
- June 23
- Writer and humorist Irvin S. Cobb (1876; d.1944)
- Russian (Ukrainian) poet Anna Akhmatova (1888; d.1966) nee Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
- Frank Fraser Darling, British/Scottish naturalist and author (1903; d.1979)
- well-known post-war German novelist Wolfgang Koeppen (1906; d.1996)
- French dramatist Jean Anouilh (1910; d.1987)
- Pittsburgh-born novelist David Leavitt (1961)
- June 24
- St. John of the Cross (1542; d.1591), aka San Juan de la Cruz, born Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, Spanish poet and Carmelite priest, famous for three mystical poems, including La Noche oscura del alma (published 1618; transl. as Dark Night of the Soul)
- Ohio native, journalist, short story writer, and The Devil's Dictionary author Ambrose [Gwinett] Bierce (1842; d.1914?; lost in Mexico)
- Ernesto Sábato, Argentinian physics professor, novelist, and winner of the 1984 Cervantes Prize (1911; cited page is in Spanish)
- Saturday Review editor and promoter of holistic healing Norman Cousins (1912; d.1990)
- Boston-born poet, critic, and translator John Ciardi (1916; d.1986)
- Bengali-German novelist Anita Desai (1937, born India), whose wrote Cry, the Peacock (1963)
- NYC-born poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn (1939)
- June 25
- New York-born George Abbott, producer, director, actor, and playwright (1887; d.1995)
- British futurist George Orwell (1903; d.1950), born in Bengal, aka Eric Arthur Blair
- British novelist and biographer Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (1923)
- Mrs. Pollifax creator and Maine resident Dorothy Gilman (1924, born in New Jersey)
- Massachusetts children's book illustrator Eric Carle (1929)
- June 26
-
Besides Pearl Buck, above,
- John Mactaggart, encyclopedist and civil engineer, author of Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1791; d.1830)
- English novelist, author of The Outsider, Colin Wilson (1931)
- Philadelphia-born novelist and poet Barbara De Wayne Chase-Riboud (1939), sculptor, novelist, and poet, author of the best-selling Sally Hemings (1979)
- another Pennsylvania native, thriller writer Thomas (Tom) Boyle (1939)
- June 27
- Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee ('Chattopadhyay' in Bengali) (1838; d.1894)
- [Patricio] Lafcadio [Tessima Carlos] Hearn, Greek-Anglo-Irish-Japanese author and translator (born 1850 in Greece; d.1904), whose forte was macabre and exotic tales, and who wrote a number of books revealing an acute understanding of the culture and character of his adopted homeland, Japan
- Bulgarian poet, novelist, playwright Ivan Vazov (1850; d.1921)
- Ohio-born African-American poet, novelist, and short story writer Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872; d.1906; lots of Dunbar texts)
- Helen Keller, Alabama-born deaf/mute/blind writer (1880; d.1968)
- W[illiam] L[aughton] Lorimer, author of The New Testament in Scots (1885; d.1967; more details in Scots language version of Wikipedia)
- Welsh poet and friend of Dylan Thomas, poet Vernon Watkins (1906; d.1967)
- Baltimore-born poet, playwright, and art critic Frank O'Hara (1926; d.1966)
- African-American NY-born poet [Thelma] Lucille Clifton (1936)
- British science-fiction writer James P[atrick] Hogan (1941)
- Brooklyn native, novelist Alice McDermott (1953)
- June 28
- Swiss 'Father of the Romanticism' and author of the Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712; d.1778)
- Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, most famous for his play 'Six Characters in Search of an Author' (1867; d.1936)
- English suspense author Eric Ambler (1909; d.1998)
- Mark Helprin, NY-born storywriter and novelist (1947)
- Colorado-born poet and novelist Jane Ransom (1958)
- June 29:
- French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900; d.1944)
- Wisconsin-born historian and writer John Toland (1912; d.2004), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (1970) and author of a definitive biography of Adolph Hitler
- West Virginia short story writer, Pulitzer Prize nominee, and suicide Breece Dexter Pancake (1952; d.1979)
- June 30
- English dramatist John Gay (1685; d.1732; 'Beggar's Opera')
- Alexander Dyce, Scottish scholar and editor (1798; d.1869)
- British suspense novelist Winston (Mawdsley) Graham (1910; d.2003), whose novel Marnie was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock
- Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz (1911; d.2004)
- Scottish children's novelist Mollie Hunter aka Maureen Mollie Hunter McIlwraith McVeigh (1922)
- popular American children's author and illustrator David McPhail (1940)