7 Author Birthdays December 11 to 17 – Who Shares Your Day?

by LitStack Editor

You can find the books relating to our author birthdays at our bookshop, on our list of Sharon’s Birthday Picks.

7 author birthdays who shares your day?

Here are seven author birthdays for this week.

Check out which authors are your favorites, and find out who shares your day.

Author Birthdays Who Shares Your Day?

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – December 11

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On this day, December 11, in 1918, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia. An outspoken critic of Communist totalitarianism, his books, including The Gulag Archipelago (1973) and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), shed light on Soviet labor camps. Although he served in the Red Army (twice decorated) some of his personal letters criticizing Stalin were intercepted and he was convicted in 1945 of “founding a hostile organization.” Promptly imprisoned, he did not see freedom until 1956. 

Following an assassination attempt in 1971, he was deported in 1974 but returned to Moscow in 1994 once the Soviet Union had dissolved. He died of heart failure in 2008, at age 89.


Gustave Flaubert – December 12

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On this day, December 12, in 1821, Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen, France. Never married, he was an unapologetic sensualist with both men and women, and suffered from STDs most of his life. Although he wrote numerous works and was a prolific letter writer, he is mainly remembered for his masterpiece, Madame Bovary. Published in 1856, it created a scandal in its “scrupulously truthful portraiture of life.” 

Flaubert was charged with immorality by the government upon its publication (his heroine has numerous affairs in an attempt to escape her empty life) but was acquitted. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1880 at age 56.


Emma Bull – December 13

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On this day, December 13, in 1954, American writer Emma Bull was born in Torrance, California. Considered a pioneer of urban fantasy, her novel Bone Dance (set in a post-apocalyptic Minneapolis) was nominated for a Hugo, a Nebula, and a World Fantasy Award. Minneapolis also plays a backdrop in her 1987 urban fantasy work, War for the Oaks

But writing isn’t Ms. Bull’s only artistic pursuit: she also plays guitar and over the years has been a member of the Flash Girls, a goth-folk duo, and Cats Laughing, a psychedelic improv folk-jazz band. Today, she turns 69.


Shirley Jackson – December 14

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On this day, December 14, in 1916, mystery and horror writer Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco, California. Immortalized by her short story, “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House, she was the recipient of numerous awards including Best American Short Stories awards in 1944, 1951, 1956 and 1964, New York Times Book Review’s Best Fiction awards in 1959, 1966 and 1968, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story in 1961 and 1966. 

She died in her sleep of heart failure at age 48, but her legacy lives on in the Shirley Jackson Awards, established in 2007, which celebrate outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.


Betty Smith – December 15

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On this day, December 15, in 1896, author Betty Smith was born in Brooklyn, New York. She only wrote four novels, but it was her first, 1943’s semi-autobiographical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, that became a cherished classic of American popular literature. She married before completing high school, and nevertheless attended college once her two daughters were in school, pursuing a law degree as well as studying literature, writing, drama and journalism. 

In 1951 she contributed the “book” for the musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and became a well-known dramatist. She died of pneumonia in 1972, at age 75.


Jane Austen – December 16

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On this day, December 16, in 1775, Jane Austen was born at the Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, England, where her father was the rector. Although not a recluse, her family was her whole world and support; her sister Cassandra (who also never married) was her closest friend throughout her entire life. She lived in the same house until she was 25 at which time her father retired and moved the family to Bath; five years later he died, leaving the Austen women financially strapped and socially adrift. 

While her four novels published during her lifetime were popular and well received, she never returned to the landed gentry class that she had known while growing up. She died of a lingering disease in 1817 at age 41.


John Kennedy Toole – December 17

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On this day, December 17, John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to a car salesman and a teacher. He graduated from Tulane University and went on to study English at Columbia University. He was later drafted into the U.S. Army and was stationed for a time in Puerto Rico.

The author of the picaresque novel, A Confederacy of Dunces (published in 1980), he died by his own hand in 1969 and was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His mother published both of his two novels, A Confederacy of Dunces and The Neon Bible, which was adapted into a film.


Also on December 17 – A Christmas Carol

On this day, December 17, in 1843, Charles Dickens’ holiday masterpiece A Christmas Carol was published by Chapman & Hall. Dickens was 31 when he wrote the work that birthed the iconic characters of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. It only took him six weeks to pen the entire tale, with the final pages written barely 2 weeks prior to publication. 

The first edition numbered 6,000 copies, and sold out by Christmas Eve; the cost was 5 shillings. Not only was it popular with readers, but critics loved it, too, even those who had “bah, humbug’ed” Dickens’ earlier works.

Be sure to look at other Author Birthdays, a weekly feature on LitStack from contributing writer Sharon Browning, and be sure and support independent bookstores – buy a book today at LitStack Bookshop, with tons of author birthday titles on our list of Sharon’s Birthday Picks.

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