Flannery O’Connor Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Flannery O’Connor, born March 25, 1925.

Mary Flannery O’Connor was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. The unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations or imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama.

Her writing reflected her Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of Catholicism-defined morality and ethics. Her posthumously compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise.

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Dario Fo Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Dario Fo, born March 24, 1926.

Dario Luigi Angelo Fo was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his time he was “arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre”. Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of “illegitimate” forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players) and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell’arte.

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Alan Bleasdale Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Alan Bleasdale, born March 23, 1946.

Alan George Bleasdale is an English screenwriter, best known for social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people. A former teacher, he has written for radio, stage and screen, and has also written novels. Bleasdale’s plays typically represented a more realistic, contemporary depiction of life in Liverpool than was usually seen in the media.

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Billy Collins Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Billy Collins, born March 22, 1941.

William James Collins is an American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, retiring in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library in 1992 and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

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Lauren Kate Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Lauren Kate, born March 21, 1981.

Lauren Kate  is an American author of adult and young adult fiction. Thus far she’s published thirteen novels and one novella. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages, have sold more than eleven million copies worldwide, and have spent combined months on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Her titles include The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove and Fallen, which reached number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List for children’s chapter books. Fallen’s sequel Torment entered the NYT Best Seller list at number 1.[1] The sequels Passion and Rapture also reached the spot of NYT Best Seller #1.

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Emily Giffin Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Emily Giffin, born March 20, 1972.

Emily Fisk Giffin is an American author of several novels commonly categorized as “chick lit.”

Her notable works include Something Borrowed, Heart of the Matter and The One and Only.

Emily Giffin was born on March 20, 1972. She attended Naperville North High School in Naperville, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), where she was a member of a creative writing club and served as editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper. Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she double-majored in history and English and also served as manager of the basketball team. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia.

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John Burnside Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to John Burnside, born March 19, 1955.

John Burnside FRSL FRSE is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O’Brien) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book, Black Cat Bone. In 2023 he won the David Cohen Prize.

Burnside was born in Dunfermline and raised in Cowdenbeath and Corby. He studied English and European Thought and Literature at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996. He is a former Writer in Residence at the University of Dundee and is now Professor in Creative Writing at St Andrews University, where he teaches creative writing, literature and ecology and American poetry. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge, Feast Days, winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance, winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Light Trap was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. His 2011 collection, Black Cat Bone, was awarded The Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize.

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George Plimpton Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to George Plimpton, born March 18, 1927.

George Ames Plimpton was an American writer. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was also known for “participatory journalism,” including accounts of his active involvement in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur.

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Amitava Kumar Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Amitava Kumar, born March 17, 1963.

Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English, holding the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.

Kumar was born in the city of Arrah in the Indian state of Bihar on 17 March 1963. He grew up close to his birthplace in Patna, also in Bihar. His Father, Ishwar Chandra was a Senior Bihar Bureaucrat from Jadopur, East Champaran Bihar He attended St Michael’s High School. In India, Kumar earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hindu College, Delhi University in 1984. He holds two master’s degrees in Linguistics and Literature from Delhi University  and Syracuse University respectively. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota.

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