September LitBirthdays

September

September 1 Nelson George James Reaney Eleanor Hibbert (aka Victoria Holt Lily Tomlin	September 2 Tim Key Tom Glazer William C. Rhoden Tetsuo Hara 原 哲夫	September 3 Eduardo Galeano Naomi Lewis Mahjoor (Ghulam Ahmad) Mort Walker Spike Feresten
September 4 Joan Aiken Antonin Artaud Damon Kyle Wayans  Richard Wright	September 5 Bob Newhart Werner Herzog Robert Fergusson Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara)	September 6 Sergio Aragonés Edward Einhorn Christopher Brookmyre Robyn Davidson Robert Pirsig
September 7 Elia Kazan  (Janet) Taylor Caldwell Houshang Moradi Kermani	September 8 Boris Ryzhy  Michael Frayn Kimberly Peirce Jack Prelutsky	September 9 Aleksandar Hemon Leo Tolstoy Sonia Sanchez
September 10 Shlomo Sand Franz Werfel Charles Kuralt Andrei Makine	September 11 Katri Vala D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence Tony Gilroy	September 12 Kristin Hunter Lattany Louis Macneice Stanislav Lem
September 13 Bill Monroe  Roald Dahl Tom Holt Tavis Smiley	September 14 Ivan Klima Hans Faverey Ekiwah Adler Beléndez Ayo (Joy Alasunmibo Ogunmakin)	September 15 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie François, duc de La Rochefoucauld Agatha Christie Dan Lungu Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich (Elizabeth Charlotte Welskopf) Marie Arana

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September 16 Prasoon Joshi Clive Bell  Molly Shannon Paul Henning	September 17 Igor Štiks Hank Williams, Ken Kesey Hope Larson Francis Chichester	September 18 Samuel Johnson Christopher Lynn Hedges Agnes de Mille
September 19 Oksana Zabuzhko  Maud Sulter Damon Knight	September 20 Kazumasa Oda (小田和正 / Oda Kazumasa) Judith Thompson Upton Sinclair  Charlie Kaufman (Charles Stewart Kaufman)  Slappy White (Melvin White)	September 21 Ethan Coen Chuck Jones Frédéric Beigbeder Stephen King Leonard Cohen H.G. Wells Édouard Glissant
September 22 Rene O. Villanueva Ashokamitran (Jagadisa Thyagarajan) György Faludy Manzoor Ahmad Svilen Noev	September 23 Joshua Foer Euripedes Ana Marie Cox Pauline Réage (Anne Desclos) Ani DiFranco	September 24 Eavan Boland Brinck (Niels Brinck Kristensen) Nia Vardalos F. Scott Fitzgerald
September 25 Ian Tyson William Faulkner Shel Silverstein Lu Xun (魯迅) Andrzej Stasiuk	September 26 Raoul Cauvin Jane Smiley T.S. Eliot Zhang Tianyi (张天翼)	September 27 Romano Scarpa Josef Škvorecký Grazia Deledda
September 28 Confucius / 孔子 / Kǒng Zǐ Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys) Prosper Mérimée Rosario Ferré	September 29 Gábor Csupó Steve Tesich Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra	September 30 Francesco Tullio Altan Laura Esquivel Elie Wiesel Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

Dempsey Books are on Amazon.com

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Taslima Nasrin – August 25

Happy Birthday Taslima Nasrin!

Taslima Nasrin (born August 25, 1962) Bangladeshi novelist – Shame (Lajja)

Read about Taslima Nasrin here and here

Nasrin was born to a Muslim family in Bangladesh and studied gynaecology. She started writing at a young age, and her work criticises religion’s oppression of women, and speaks out for human rights.

In 1993, she published ‘Lajja’, which chronicles the trials a Hindu family faces while living in Bangladesh. The book speaks about how badly minorities are treated in Bangladesh, because of which the Bangaldeshi Government banned it in 1993.

Negative sentiment towards the author kept increasing and reached a crescendo in 1994, when Muslim fundamentalists demanded her execution. There were widespread protests against her views and fatwas issued against her. Nasrin was forced to go into hiding for two months, before finally fleeing the country. She has not gone back since.
(from “Taslima Nasrin’s Life in Exile” by Tara Khandelwal)

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Taslima Nasrin speaks at the India Ideas Conclave in 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohl_L0hxCbA

August LitBirthdays

LitBirthdays in August

August 1 Chuck D (Carlton Ridenhour) Francis Scott Key Herman Melville	August 2 Isabel Allende James Baldwin Homer Banks Bei Dao (Zhao Zhenkai)	August 3 Lauren Liebenberg Leon Uris
August 4 Robert Hayden Helen Thomas Barack Obama	August 5 Guy de Maupassant Abbé Pierre (Henri Marie Joseph Grouès)	August 6 Louella Parsons Alfred Tennyson M. Night Shyamalan
August 7 Justin Kawika Young Sofia Rotaru Garrison Keillor	August 8 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Mel Tillis	August 9 Izaak Walton Jean Piaget
August 10 Abay Ibrahim Qunanbayuli	August 11 Jim Lee Alex Haley	August 12 George Soros Sue Monk Kidd
August 13 Amélie Nothomb Dan Fogelberg Kamila Shamsie	August 14 Bryce Courtenay Steve Martin Danielle Steel Gary Larson	August 15 Julia Child Sri Aurobindo Mikao Usui
August 16 Charles Bukowski Diana Wynne Jones	August 17 Herta Müller Gene (Geneva) Stratton-Porter	August 18 Mika Elsa Morante Brian Aldiss
August 19 Eamonn Fingleton Ogden Nash Jerzy Andrzejewski	August 20 Isaac Hayes Musa Geshaev H. P.(Howard Phillips) Lovecraft	August 21 Jules Michelet Friz Freleng
August 22 Irmtraud Morgner	August 23 Ephraim Kishon Nazik al-Mala’ika	August 24 Jorge Luis Borges Stephen Fry Ali Smith
August 25 Charles Wright Ali Smith	August 26 Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) Kamila Shamsie	August 27 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
August 28 Tasha Tudor Ai Weiwei	August 29 Dorothy Tennov René Depestre	August 30 Camilla Läckberg Eriksson Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
August 31 DuBose Heyward William Saroyan

Dempsey Books are on Amazon.com

LitBirthdays Hans Rosling

Happy Birthday Hans Rosling!

Hans Rosling (born July 27, 1948) – Swedish physician and statistician

Read about Hans Rosling here and here

July LitBirthdays

July

July 1 Twyla Tharp Irna Phillips Juan Carlos Onetti	July 2 Wisława Szymborska Evelyn Lau Wibo (“Wim” Willem Louis Joseph Boost)	July 3 Alan Schwarz Julian Assange Kid Sister Franz Kafka
July 4 Guram Rcheulishvili Colin Welland Neil Simon Mao Dun Nathaniel Hawthorne Ann Landers	July 5 Armin Kõomägi Jody Lynn Nye Bill Watterson Veronica Guerin	July 6 Andrew Martin The Dalai Lama Louisa Tuthill
July 7 Lesego Rampolokeng David McCullough Helene Johnson Lillien Jane Martin	July 8 Tom Egeland Anna Quindlen Freeway (Leslie Edward Pridgen)	July 9 Patrice Barbara Cartland Masami Tsuda Anne Born
July 10 Mildred Wirt Benson Arja Uusitalo Alice Munro	July 11 Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai (白先勇; pinyin: Bái Xiānyǒng,) Suzanne Nadine Vega Amitav Ghosh	July 12 Oscar Hammerstein II Pablo Neruda
July 13 Helga Königsdorf Cameron Crowe Wole Soyinka	July 14 Natalia Ginzburg Isaac Bashevis Singer Angélique Kidjo Laura Numeroff	July 15 Jacques Rivière Dorothy Fields Iris Murdoch
July 16 Mari Evans Ross King Saint Clare of Assisi	July 17 Erle Stanley Gardner Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון) Michael Francis Gilbert	July 18 Yevgeny Yevtushenko Alfian Sa’at Elizabeth Gilbert Nelson Mandela
July 19 Norman Manea Garth Nix A.J. (Archibald Joseph) Cronin Vladimir Mayakovsky	July 20 Simin Beh’bahāni (Persian: سیمین بهبهانی) Imam Bukhari (Muhammed Al-Bukhari) Olga Hahn-Neurath (Elizabeth) Dilys Powell Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)	July 21 Mohammed Dib Ernest Miller Hemingway Suso Cecchi d’Amico
July 22 Ala Ghawas Kokia (Akiko Yoshida 吉田亜紀子) Emma Lazarus Albert Brooks Enrique Laso	July 23 Milisav Popović Raymond Chandler Eugène François Vidocq	July 24 Alexandre Dumas Patrick Bruce (Pat) Oliphant Colleen Doran Banana Yoshimoto
July 25 Maria Gripe Josephine Tey (Elizabeth MacKintosh, AKA Gordon Daviot) Diam’s (Mélanie Georgiades)	July 26 George Bernard Shaw Aldous Huxley Carl G. Jung	July 27 Hilde Domin Elizabeth Hardwick Bobbie Gentry
July 28 Helen Beatrix Potter Francis Veber	July 29 Chester Himes Nathalie Handal Ruud Janssen	July 30 Barbara Kopple Salvador Novo Emily Jane Brontë
July 31 Pam Withers J. K. Rowling

Dempsey Books are on Amazon.com

June 15 – Kobayashi Issa

Happy Birthday Kobayashi Issa!

Kobayashi Issa by Hashimoto Heihachi

Kobayashi Issa – born June 15, 1763 – Japanese Haiku poet

Read about Kobayashi Issa here and here

Read the Gwanlingo blog post about Kobayashi Issa:

Issa is considered one of four great masters of Haiku. This seventeen syllable poetic form is known for its ability to squeeze astonishing beauty and depth of feeling out of plain language and direct observation. Issa’s poems are remarkable for their “pathos and humor,” especially in light of the string of tragedies that marked each stage of his life.

Read some of Kobayashi Issa’s poems here.

春風や　牛にひかれて　善光寺

The spring breeze.

Being pulled by a cow

To the Zenkoji temple.

[From the Japanese traditional legend. An old woman who had no faith found herself in Zenkoji while chasing the cow that hung the dried cloth on the horn. As a result, she began to believe Buddhism deeply.]

June 14 Judith Kerr

Happy Birthday Judith Kerr!

Judith Kerr – Born June 14, 1923 – U.K. writer and illustrator – The Tiger Who Came to Tea (1968)

Read about Judith Kerr here and here

The backstory of The Tiger Who Came to Tea

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25027090

Judith Kerr visits her childhood home in Germany
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tqJtWNwnRI0