Here are seven Author Shoutouts for this week. Check out which authors are your favorites, and discover an author whose work you have not yet read.
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This Week’s Author Shoutouts:
William Faulkner
William Faulkner, born in New Albany, Mississippi, receives an Author Shoutout. Regarded as the greatest writer of Southern literature, his entire body of work, spanning from his debut novel, The Sound and the Fury (1929), to his final piece, The Reivers (1962), garnered immense admiration and recognition. In 1949, Faulkner was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature for his exceptional and distinctive contributions to the modern American novel. Subsequently, he went on to win the National Book Award in 1951 and 1955, as well as two Pulitzer Prizes in 1955 and 1963.
Having written eight scripts, he also pursued a career as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, he passed away at the age of 64 due to a heart attack resulting from injuries sustained in a horseback riding accident in 1962.
T.S. Eliot
An Author Shoutout to T.S. Eliot, the renowned American writer, who hailed from St. Louis, Missouri. He was a versatile figure who excelled as an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic. Known for his ground-breaking Modernist poetry, Eliot’s notable achievements include being awarded the Nobel Prize. While his famous quote, “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper,” resonates with many, he also gained significant popularity through his work Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. This book served as the inspiration for the immensely successful Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats, which enjoyed an impressive 18-year run at Broadway’s Winter Garden theater. Sadly, Eliot passed away at the age of 76 in 1965 due to emphysema.
An Author Shoutout to Google, yes, the renowned search engine that came into existence on September 27, 1998, marking its official birth. It should be noted that while Google was incorporated on September 4, 1998, and implemented on September 7, 1998, September 27 was declared as its official birthday in 2005. This declaration aligned with a strategic public relations move that coincided with the announcement of a significantly expanded web index. Notably, the foundation of Google can be traced back to January 1996 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both Stanford students, embarked on the development of BackRub, which would later be known as Google.
Google got its name from a misspelling of googol, which is a term for the number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Can you believe it’s only been 25 years?
Piper Kerman
Author Piper Kerman, born in Boston, Massachusetts, receives an Author Shoutout. She faced legal charges for money-laundering in 1998 and received a 15-month sentence in a federal correctional facility, serving 13 months in total. Her memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, published in 2010, was later adapted into the highly-praised Netflix series of the same name.
After her release from prison, Kerman has extensively addressed the issues concerning incarcerated women and the flaws within the federal prison system. Presently, she serves as a communication strategist for non-profit organizations.
Miguel de Cervantes
An Author Shoutout to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, widely recognized as Cervantes, who was born in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He gained eternal fame primarily for his renowned masterpiece, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, commonly referred to as Don Quixote. Although Cervantes’s literary repertoire included various plays, poems, and novels, it is Don Quixote that solidified his legacy. Despite struggling to sustain himself solely through writing, Cervantes pursued other professions throughout his life, including serving in the army (where he was captured by pirates and endured five years of enslavement before being ransomed), working as a purchasing agent, accountant, and tax collector. He passed away at the age of 68 due to diabetes and liver disease.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
An Author Shoutout to Ta-Nehisi Coates who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and became well-known while working as a national correspondent at The Atlantic. His writings focused on cultural, social, and political matters, particularly centered around African Americans and white supremacy. Coates has authored three non-fiction books, namely The Beautiful Struggle, Between the World and Me (recipient of the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction), and We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. In addition, he has contributed to Marvel Comics by writing series for Black Panther and Captain America.
He was honored with a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 2015 and his debut novel, The Water Dancer, was released in 2019, earning him the British Fantasy Society Sydney J. Bounds Award.
Julie Andrews
An Author Shoutout to Julie Andrews, a celebrated singer, actor, British national treasure, and author, who hails from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. While she has penned several acclaimed children’s books and stories, often collaborating with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, she is most renowned for her legendary performances in Mary Poppins, as Maria in The Sound of Music, and as Queen Clarisse Renaldi in The Princess Diaries.
Just a few of her awards include an Academy Award, five Golden Globes, three Grammys, two Emmys, the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honors Award.
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