You can find and buy the books relating to our author birthdays at the LitStack Bookshop on our list of Sharon’s Birthday Picks.
Here are seven author birthdays for this week.
Check out which authors are your favorites, and find out who shares your day.
Table of Contents
John Updike – March 18
On this day, March 18, in 1932, John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. One of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize twice (the other two being Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner), he also wrote numerous short stories, poems and children’s books, and was both an art and literary critic. He had a long contributing relationship with The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, but originally wanted to become a cartoonist.
Well known for writing about the average small-town American in crisis, he once described his writing style as an attempt “to give the mundane its beautiful due.” He died of lung cancer in 2009, at age 76.
Philip Roth – March 19
On this day, March 19, in 1933, Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey (which was to factor greatly as the setting for his acclaimed 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint). His first book, a collection of fiction which he called Goodbye, Columbus, won the National Book Award in 1960. The novella of the same name from that collection was later made into a movie which ended up being one of the most popular films of 1969.
Roth also won the National Book Award in 1995 for Sabbath’s Theater, and in 1997 won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for American Pastoral. He died of heart failure last in 2018 at age 85.
Lois Lowry – March 20
On this day, March 20, in 1937, Lois Lowry was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is author of more than 30 children’s books, including perhaps the best known young adult novel of modern times, Newbery Medal winner The Giver (it is also one of the most challenged book in school libraries and curricula, due to its tackling difficult subject matter, such as questioning authority). The daughter of an Army dentist, she moved often during her childhood, including spending two of her junior high years in Tokyo.
Not only an author, she was also well known for her photography – a calling which she embraced passionately before she began her writing career. Today she turns 87.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden – March 21
On this day, March 21, in 1956, editor and writer Teresa Nielsen Hayden was born in Mesa, Arizona. Working mainly in the science fiction genre, she and her husband Patrick Nielsen Hayden have also collaborated on numerous sci-fi fanzines (garnering two of her five Hugo nominations); currently she is a consulting editor at Tor Books. In her online editing she utilized the technique of “disemvoweling” (rewriting texts with all vowels removed); the term was actually coined in a comment in her weblog “Making Light”.
She grew up in the Mormon faith, but was excommunicated in 1980 due to her support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Today, she turns 68.
Louis L’Amour – March 22
On this day, March 22, in 1908, Louis L’Amour was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. King of the Westerns (he preferred “frontier novels”), he lived in North Dakota until age 8, when the economy failed and his family went on the move, where they “skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California and Nevada, and in the sawmills and lumber camps of the Pacific Northwest”; he also was a professional boxer and merchant seaman, traveling extensively – these formed the basis of many of his works.
Awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he died of lung cancer at age 80.
Kim Stanley Robinson – March 23
On this day, March 23, in 1952, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois. With two Hugos and three Nebulas under his belt (and many other major awards, as well), he is possibly best known for his “Mars” trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars – names derived from the color of the planet Mars as it evolves through the process of terraforming). His work has been called the “gold-standard” of realistic science-fiction writing, with environmentalism, social justice and “scientists as citizens” as major themes.
His 2015 book, Aurora, relates the story of man’s first voyage beyond the solar system; two of his recent books, 2017’s New York 2140 and 2020’s The Ministry for the Future, are considered within the science fiction subgenre, climate fiction. Today, “KSR” turns 72.
Joe Barbera – March 24
On this day, March 24, in 1911, Joe Barbera was born in New York City. After working at animation studios in NYC he moved to Los Angeles, landing at MGM. There he met William Hanna and the two began a collaboration that by 1957 had become the most successful TV animation studio of the time. Their creations included such beloved shows as “The Flintstones”, “Yogi Bear”, “The Jetsons”, “Jonny Quest”, “Scooby-Doo” and “The Smurfs”, and later “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “The Powerpuff Girls” and “Johnny Bravo” for Cartoon Network.
Both remained at the helm of Hanna-Barbera until 1991 – almost a half century of creativity. Joe Barbera died of natural causes in 2006 at age 95.
Other LitStack Resources
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.
You can find and buy the books relating to our author birthdays at the LitStack Bookshop on our list of Sharon’s Birthday Picks.
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