Terence Dean Brooks, better known as Terry, was born on January 8, 1944 in the rural Midwestern town of Sterling, Illinois. It was in this rural town that Brooks spent much of his formative years. Without much else to do, he spent the majority of his time relaxing in Sinnissippi Park and day dreaming up the stories that would one day make him a bestselling author. This park would eventually become the setting for his Word & Void trilogy.
American writer EL Doctorow was born on January 6, 1931 and passed away on July 21, 2015. He has been called a master of historical fiction, and is a rarity in the modern literary world for also being a commercial success.
Doctorow was born in New York to Russian American parents, attended public high school. He then studied philosophy at Kenyon College, where he studied under writer and critic John Crowe Ransom.
How often does a wine merchant become a bestselling author and thwart one of world history's most notorious villains? Such was the unlikely career of Dennis Wheatley, the author who dazzled readers with thrilling tales of intrigue. He would later use those same magnificent storytelling skills to weave a plot even Hitler couldn't ignore.
More than fifty years after her death, the world is finally catching up with Zora Neale Hurston. The independent and engaging African-American feminist was born on January 7, 1891 and grew up in the small African-American community of Eatonville, Florida. She was not exposed to the inequities of racism in the South as a child, or limited by the expectations of black literary movements in the 1920s as a young woman. Hurston wrote her novels, folklore, short stories, and essays not as a crusading pioneer, but as an anthropologist, an intellectual, and a lover.
Born on January 5, 1932 in Alessandria, Italy, Umberto Eco is one of the world's most prolific legendary authors. His family name is supposedly an acronym for Ex caelis oblatus ("A gift from heaven,") and was given to Eco's foundling grandfather by a city official. Eco's father was one of thirteen children. He urged his son to pursue a career in law: stable, lucrative, and prestigious. But Eco had other ideas. His career has led him to philosophy, semiotics, and literature.
Eco is a collector of books himself, and he's built an enviable personal library of over 50,000 books. His philosophy of collecting is, however, a bit different than that of most rare book collectors. Eco views his library as a tool for research and information, and he values it not for the books he's already read, but for those that he has not yet read. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Beinecke Library, he delivered an excellent lecture on the library as a model for culture at Yale University this past fall.
On January 4, 1785, Jacob Grimm was born in Hesse-Kassel. Though he was both a mythologist and a philologist, he's remembered best as one half of the Brothers Grimm. The brothers traveled around collecting and recording folktales, which have been translated countless times and adapted into some of today's most beloved children's stories. But these adaptations often bear little resemblance to their roots, which are, indeed, quite grim (pun entirely intended...) These tales express fundamental ideas and reactions to the human experience, including hopes and joys, fears and sorrows, cruelty and harshness often censured by parents of today’s children.
Isaac Asimov, legendary author of science fiction, celebrated his birthday on January 2. Born Isaak Yudovich Osimov in Petrovichi, Russia around January 2, 1920, Asimov immigrated to Brooklyn, New York with his family. Asimov would always retain a strong New York accent, a feature just as distinctive as his legendary mutton chops. The author is less well known for his flying phobia and using the nom de plume Paul French.
Creative genius blooms where it’s planted. Inventors, engineers, artists, and writers use their everyday experiences and observations in their work, mimicking nature in their creation or drawing greater ideas from small occurrences. It is not a different set of experiences that leads to creative genius, but a different style of thought. In the literary world, those imprisoned for crimes related to either their writing or their personal lives have long produced critically acclaimed work.
On December 30, 1816, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin were wed. The two had already run away together in July, 1814, but they couldn't get married because..Percy was already married. Once his wife died, he and Mary tied the knot almost immediately. Though Shelley had been heir to a wealthy relative's estate, he'd been banished from Oxford after refusing to admit authorship of a controversial essay. Thus he and his wife spent most of their time in Europe, dodging creditors.
Nicholas Sparks, one of the fiction world’s most popular and prolific writers, was born on December 31, 1965. Author of eighteen books, Sparks has over 89 million copies in print, and his novels have been translated into over 50 languages. Eight of his books have been adapted into film.
Sparks first achieved popularity with The Notebook, his second novel. A love story inspired by his wife’s grandparents, he wrote the book in six months at the age of 28. Two years after its completion, he had found a literary agent, received a $1 million dollar advance, and become an instant New York Times bestselling author.
