August 2 Writer Birthdays
August 2 Writer Birthdays
- 1865 - Irving Babbitt, American academic and literary critic; a founder of the New Humanism movement.
- 1867 - Ernest Christopher Dowson, English poet, novelist, and short-story writer associated with the Decadent movement.
- 1884 - Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos, Venezuelan novelist and politician who was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history.
- 1894 - Francis James Westbrook Pegler, American journalist and columnist famed for his opposition to the New Deal and labor unions.
- 1900 - Holling C. Holling, American children's book author and illustrator best known for the book Paddle-to-the-Sea, a Caldecott Honor book; he also wrote and illustrated a comic strip.
- 1924 - James Baldwin, important, prolific, and influential African-American author and civil-rights activist, known for novels, plays, poetry, short stories, and essays, and considered one of the greatest writers of his generation.
- 1934 - Stephen Sandy, American poet and professor.
- 1942 - Isabel Allende, award-winning Chilean-American novel best known for her works of magic realism; she is considered the most widely read Spanish-language author, but is also fluent in English. Awards include Chile's National Literature Prize and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her father was first cousin to Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.
- 1946 - James Howe, American author of children's and young adult books, notably the Bunnicula series about a vampire rabbit who sucks the juice out of vegetables.
- 1947 - Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and screenwriter best known for his book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
- 1949 - Bei Dao (aka Zhao Zhengkai) Beijing-born poet now living in exile in the U.S.; one of the few Chinese writers to have an international audience.
- 1954 - Ken MacLeod, Scottish science fiction writer of space opera and hard sci-fi who has been nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards.
- 1955 - Caleb Carr, American novelist, screenwriter, and military historian.
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