Here are 7 Author Shoutouts for this week. Find your favorite author or discover an author whose work you haven’t read…yet.
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This Week’s Author Shoutouts
John Updike
An Author Shoutout to John Updike, born in Reading, Pennsylvania, who is acknowledged for winning the Pulitzer Prize twice, a feat only achieved by two other novelists – Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner. In addition to his novels, he crafted various short stories, poems, and children’s books, all while excelling as an art and literary critic. Although he enjoyed a lengthy association with The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, his initial aspiration was to pursue a career in cartooning.
Renowned for his portrayal of ordinary small-town Americans facing challenges, he characterized his writing style as an effort to highlight the beauty in everyday life. He passed away from lung cancer in 2009, at 76 years old.
Philip Roth
An Author Shoutout to Philip Roth, born in Newark, New Jersey, where his famous 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint is set. His debut book, Goodbye, Columbus, won the National Book Award in 1960. The novella of the same title from that book was adapted into a successful film in 1969.
In 1995, Roth received the National Book Award for Sabbath’s Theater, and two years later, in 1997, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for American Pastoral. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 85 due to heart failure.
Lois Lowry
An Author Shoutout to Lois Lowry, born in Honolulu, Hawaii, as a celebrated author with over 30 children’s books to her name. Among her notable works is the award-winning young adult novel, The Giver, which is frequently contested in school settings for its exploration of challenging themes like authority. Raised by an Army dentist, she experienced a nomadic childhood, including two years of junior high school in Tokyo.
She was recognized not only as an author but also for her photography, a passion she pursued avidly prior to starting her writing journey. Lowry resides in both Maine and Naples, Florida, where she continues to actively write and speak.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
An Author Shoutout to editor and writer Teresa Nielsen Hayden, originally from Mesa, Arizona, who is recognized for her work in science fiction and her collaboration with husband Patrick Nielsen Hayden on various sci-fi fanzines, which contributed to her five Hugo nominations. Presently, she serves as a consulting editor at Tor Books. In her online editing, she is known for popularizing the “disemvoweling” technique, a term coined in a comment on her blog Making Light.
Raised in the Mormon religion, she was excommunicated in 1980 for backing the Equal Rights Amendment. Currently, she resides in Arizona.
Louis L’Amour
An Author Shoutout to Louis L’Amour, known for his frontier novels, who was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. He spent his childhood moving across various states due to economic hardships, engaging in activities such as cattle skinning, hay baling, mining, and working in lumber camps. These experiences heavily influenced his literary works.
After having received both the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he passed away from lung cancer at the age of 80.
Kim Stanley Robinson
An Author Shoutout to science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, born in Waukegan, Illinois, who has received two Hugos and three Nebulas, among other major awards. He is most recognized for the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), which explores terraforming Mars with the planet’s color changes as titles. His writing is revered for its realistic approach to science fiction, focusing on environmentalism, social justice, and the role of scientists as societal contributors.
In 2015, he published Aurora, a novel that tells the tale of humanity’s initial journey beyond our solar system. Two of his more recent works, New York 2140 from 2017 and The Ministry for the Future from 2020, fall into the climate fiction subgenre of science fiction. Robinson spent some time as a full-time father before relocating to a cohousing community in Davis, California. He considers himself a passionate backpacker, drawing inspiration from the Sierra Nevada mountains where he often explores.
Joe Barbera
An Author Shoutout to Joe Barbera, a native of New York City, who transitioned from working at animation studios in NYC to Los Angeles, ultimately landing at MGM. It was there that he crossed paths with William Hanna, sparking a collaboration that led to the formation of the most successful TV animation studio by 1957. Their portfolio featured iconic shows like The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Scooby-Doo, and The Smurfs, later expanding to include Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, and Johnny Bravo on Cartoon Network.
Joe Barbera and William Hanna led Hanna-Barbera until 1991, marking nearly 50 years of creativity. Joe Barbera passed away in 2006 at the age of 95 from natural causes.
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