Did You Know?
Fun Facts about the Bards Born in December
Fairuz Maliha Surma
November
Thomas Mallon (November 2, 1951)
American novelist, essayist, and critic.
# He attended Brown University and later earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
# He received both an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award and a Rockefeller Fellowship.
Michael Cunningham (November 6, 1952)
American novelist and screenwriter.
# He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
# His novel, The Hours, was made into a feature film starring Nicole Kidman.
Kazuo Ishiguro (November 8, 1954)
Nobel Prize-winning British novelist, screenwriter, and short-story writer.
# “There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.”
# “How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly?”
Oliver Goldsmith (November 10, 1728)
Irish novelist, playwright, and poet.
# “I love everything that’s old, – old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.”
# “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs.”
Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887)
American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor.
# It is impossible to compare her with other poets because she was so special—a fabler whose animals remain animals, a baseball fan, and praises museum rarities, office furniture, scientists, and biblical characters.
# She died because of stroke.
Allen Tate (November 19, 1899)
American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate.
# “Men expect too much, do too little.”
# “Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.”
Marc Brown (November 25, 1945)
American author and illustrator of children’s books.
# Marc enjoyed many stories told by Thora his grandmother when he was growing up.
# Marc tried many different jobs including driving truck, being a short-order cook, and a college teacher but his talent for illustration and writing children’s books won out.
William Blake (November 28, 1757)
English poet, painter, and printmaker.
# “To generalize is to be an idiot.”
# “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
C.S. Lewis (November 29, 1898)
British writer and lay theologian.
# He is best known for his children’s classic series – The Chronicles of Narnia.
#The Four Loves summarizes four kinds of human love–affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God.
Mark Twain (November 30, 1835)
American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.
# Even though he didn’t go to school as a child for very long, he knew that no matter where he went in life, he could still educate himself by life experiences and by reading at the library during the evening.
#Twain often drew from his life in his writings.
December
Jan Brett (December 1, 1949)
American illustrator and writer.
# Over thirty-seven million books in print.
# She has a fascination for pets. Her pets include 14 chickens, 4 ducks, 1 white snow bunny and a hedgehog which she calls Buffy.
Thomas Carley (December 4, 1795)
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, translator, historian, mathematician, and teacher.
# “A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.”
# “Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”
Christina Rossetti (December 5, 1830)
English poet.
# “Silence is more musical than any song.”
# “Love shall be our token; love be yours and love me mine.”
Noam Chomsky (December 7, 1928)
American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and social critic.
# “Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.”
# “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
John Milton (December 9, 1608)
English poet, polemicist, a man of letters and civil servant of the Commonwealth of England.
# “Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”
# “Awake, Arise or be forever Falling.”
Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830)
American Poet.
# Her father was a United States Senator.
# Only 10 of her poems were published during her lifetime.
# Her family home is a museum.
# She was incredibly reclusive.
Jane Austen (December 16, 1775)
English novelist
# First writer to use the phrase “dinner party”
# According to Austen’s niece, Austen always wore a cap.
Robert Bly (December 22, 1926)
American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement.
# “The candle is not lit to give light, but to testify to the night.”
# “Wherever there is water there is something drowning.”
Henry Miller (December 26, 1891)
American writer.
# “I have no money, no resources, no hope, I’m the happiest man alive.”
# “Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
Nicholas Spark (December 31, 1965)
American Romance novelist and screenwriter.
# Nicholas Spark is estimated to have a net worth of $30 million.
# His inspiration for writing the main character in A Walk to Remember was his younger sister Dannielle who died from a brain tumor.
January
E. M. Forster (January 1, 1879)
English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and librettist.
# “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
# “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”
William Scott (January 2, 1940)
British artist, known for still-life and abstract painting.
# He was a Scottish-born British still-life painter who was influenced by the work of both Georges Braque and Paul Klee.
# His works are held in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Stephen Hawking (January 8, 1942)
English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author.
# Stephen grew up in a house where education was very important. His parents were both academics who had studied at Oxford University. Dinner times were often spent in silence while the family read books.
# When he was a teenager, Stephen and his friends built a computer out of old clock parts, telephone switchboards, and other recycled items. His friends nicknamed him, ‘Einstein.‘
Haruki Murakami (January 12, 1949)
Japanese writer.
# “Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
# “There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.”
Mary Robinson (January 14, 1949)
American short story writer and novelist.
# She has seven brothers and sisters as well as a half-brother.
# In 1977 The New Yorker began publishing her work, with the short story “Sisters.”
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706)
American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.
# He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
# He earned the title of “The First American” for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809)
American writer, editor, and literary critic.
# “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
# “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Angela Davis (January 26, 1944)
American political activist, academic, and author.
# “We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.”
# “Radical simply means “grasping things at the root.”
Edward Abbey (January 29, 1927)
American author and essayist.
# He decided to explore the American southwest and then he traveled by foot, bus, hitchhiking, and freight train hopping.
# He served two years as a military police officer in Italy.
Norman Mailer (January 31, 1923)
American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and liberal political activist.
# “The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.”
# “The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.”