Armistead Maupin Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Armistead Maupin, born May 13, 1944.

Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer notable for Tales of the City, a series of novels set in San Francisco. Maupin attended Ravenscroft School and graduated from Needham Broughton High School in 1962. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he wrote for The Daily Tar Heel.

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Edward Lear Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Edward Lear, born May 12, 1812.

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularized.

His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poems.

As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson’s poetry.

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Camilo José Cela Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Camilo José Cela, born May 11, 1916.

Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquess of Iria Flavia was a Spanish novelist, poet, story writer and essayist associated with the Generation of ’36 movement.

He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature “for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man’s vulnerability”.

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Ariel Durant Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Ariel Durant, born May 10, 1898.

Ariel Durant was a Russian-born American researcher and writer. She was the coauthor of The Story of Civilization with hear husband, Will Durant. They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

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Alan Bennett Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Alan Bennett, born May 9, 1934.

Alan Bennett is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George. In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.

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Edward Gibbon Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Edward Gibbon, born May 8, 1737.

Edward Gibbon was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organized religion.

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Angela Carter Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Angela Carter, born May 7, 1940.

Angela Olive Pearce, who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber. In 1984, her short story “The Company of Wolves” was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”. In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

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Ellen Banda-Aaku Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Ellen Banda-Aaku, born May 6, 1965.

Ellen Banda-Aaku is a Zambian author, radio drama and film producer who was born in the UK and grew up in Africa. She is the author of two novels and several books for children, and has had short stories published in anthologies and other outlets.

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Catherynne M. Valente Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Catherynne M. Valente, born May 5, 1979.

Catherynne Morgan Valente is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, the anthologies Salon Fantastique and Paper Cities, along with numerous “Year’s Best” volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the International Journal of the Humanities as well as in numerous essay collections.

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Amos Oz Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Amos Oz, born May 4, 1939.

Amos Oz, born Amos Klausner, was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onwards, Oz was a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

He was the author of 40 books, including novels, short story collections, children’s books, and essays, and his work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer. He was the recipient of many honours and awards, among them the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Legion of Honour of France, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize, and the Franz Kafka Prize.

Oz is regarded as one of “Israel’s most prolific writers and respected intellectuals”, as The New York Times worded it in an obituary.

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