March Literary Birthdays

So many great authors celebrate birthdays in March!

Gabriel García Márquez (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. “He is one of the most preeminent writers of Magical Realism. His writing forces readers to actively engage with plot to provide essential details. Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.”

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides (born March 8, 1960) is an American novelist and short story writer. “He published several stories in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and the British magazine Granta. His first novel The Virgin Suicides became even more successful after being adapted into a film by the famous American film director Sofia Coppola in 1999. His second novel, Middlesex, received the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. He currently lives in the United States, teaching creative writing at Princeton University."

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English writer, humorist and dramatist. “His first published work was a short story in Eagle comic, age 11. Douglas Adams moved from radio to become script editor of Doctor Who, also writing several stories for the Tom Baker incarnation of the Doctor. Whilst writing for Doctor Who, the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was commissioned, originally appearing as a Radio 4 series in March 1978.” - BBC.

Carl Hiaasen (born March 12, 1953) is an American journalist, columnist, and novelist. “Carl Hiaasen has been writing about Florida since his father gave him a typewriter at age six. Then it was hunt-and-peck stories about neighborhood kickball and softball games. Now Hiaasen is the author of many bestselling novels, including  Basket Case and Skinny Dip. Together, Hiaasen's novels have been published in 29 languages, which is 28 more than he can read or write!”

William Ormond Mitchell, better known as W. O. Mitchell (March 13, 1914 – February 25, 1998) was a Canadian writer “of stories that deal humorously with the hardships of western Canadian prairie life. Mitchell received favourable notice for his first novel, Who Has Seen the Wind?, a sensitive picture of a grim prairie town seen from the point of view of a small boy. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid was later developed into a popular, long-running radio and television series. In 2000, Mitchell was honoured by the government of Canada with his image on a postage stamp.”

John Hugh MacLennan (born at Glace Bay, NS, March 20, 1907 – November 9, 1990) was a Canadian novelist, essayist and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award. “Hugh MacLennan is best known as the first major English-speaking writer to attempt a portrayal of Canada's national character. His first published novel,
Barometer Rising, was about the 1917 Halifax Explosion. In 1945, he published Two Solitudes, which won the Governor General's Award for fiction that year. His books helped usher in a new, self-reflective age of Canadian literature, establishing the idea that Canada is a place worth writing about.”

Gabrielle Roy, C.C. (22 March 1909 - 13 July 1983) was a French Canadian author. “Gabrielle Roy received the highest literary awards, including the Governor General’s Award, the Prix Duvernay, and the Prix David, and was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada. Bonheur d'occasion was a huge success. It was awarded the Prix Femina, and translated into a dozen languages. “