amonofsun: write outta their heads 1.12 to 8.12

A list of writers/poets born during the first week of December. You might also recognize their works through the medium of film and television.

• Dec 1
  • Rex Stout, American mystery writer best known as the creator of Nero Wolfe (1886; d. 1975)
  • Charles Finney, American journalist and fantasy novelist The Circus of Dr. Lao (1905; d. 1984)
  • John Crowley, American author, documentary writer and academic (1942)
  • Matt Fraction, American comic book author, including the titles within the Marvel Universe (1975)

• Dec 2
  • Charles Harris Wesley, African-American historian, educator and author. In 1925, he was the fourth African-American to receive a PhD from Harvard (1891; d. 1987)
  • David Macaulay , American educator and author. Five of his titles, Cathedral, Castle, City, Pyramid, and Mill have been made into popular PBS television programs. (1946)
  • TC Boyle, American novelist (1948)
  • Ann Patchett, American author of Bel Canto and The Dutch House (1963)

• Dec 3
  • Joseph Conrad, famous works include Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Heart of Darkness was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola movie Apocalypse Now. (1857; d.1924)
  • Grace Andreacchi, an American-born novelist, poet, and playwright, known for her blend of poetic language and modernism with a post-modernist sensibility (1954)

• Dec 4
  • Samuel Butler, English author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh (1835; d.1902)
  • Cornell Woolrich, author of Rear Window, and “Father of Film Noir”  (1903; d. 1968)
  • Munro Leaf, wrote the children’s classic,  The Story of Ferdinand, in less than an hour. Labeled as subversive, it stirred an international controversy (1905; d. 1976)

• Dec 5
  • Christina Rossetti, British poet Goblin Market and Other Poems, (1830; d.1894). She often sat as a model for her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite art movement.
  • John A. Williams, African-American journalist, author, educator (1925)
  •  Joan Didion American journalist, author, and screenwriter (1934) Her works include The White Album; Play it as it Lays; The Year of Magical Thinking.
  • Mary Azarian Caldecott Medalist, and a skilled and original woodblock artist (1940)

• Dec 6
  •  Joyce Kilmer an American journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor, best known for his poem, “Trees” (1886; d. in action 1918)
  • Peter Handke,  German advant-garde novelist and playwright, who wrote the screenplay for Wings of Desire (1942)
  • Masami Kurumada, a Japanese manga artist and writer. (1953)

• Dec 7
  • Willa [Sibert] Cather , American author who wrote of frontier life on the Great Plains, in O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia  (1873; d.1947) 
  •  Yosano Akiko, Japanese author, poet, feminist, pacifist and social reformer (1878; d.1942)
  •  Noam Chomsky  an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. “Father of modern linguistics”(1928)

• Dec 8
  • James Thurber, American author and cartoonist, he celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people (1894; d. 1961)
  • Richard Llewellyn who chronicled life in Wales in books such as How Green Was My Valley (1906; d.1983)
  • Mary Gordon, New York area professor and author of Final Payments and The Company of Women  (1949)

Sources include:

library booklists.org; bookish.com; scholastic.com; wikipedia; imbd.com; american poetry foundation.org; encyclopedia britiannica; author webpages; good reads; through the lookingglass children’s literary review; victorian web;