Born: c. 1753, present-day Senegal, West AfricaDied: December 5, 1784, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. Phillis Wheatley was an American poet, born in Africa, generally recognized as the first important black American poet. Captured by slave traders at the age of eight, she was brought to the American colonies and sold to the Wheatley family of Boston, […]

Born: Nov. 3, 1920, AustraliaDied: Sep 16, 1993, BrisbaneKath Walker was an Australian Aboriginal writer and political activist, considered the first of the modern-day Aboriginal protest writers. Her first volume of poetry, We Are Going (1964), is the first book by an Aboriginal woman to be published. Raised on Stradbroke Island, off Moreton Bay, Queensland,

Born: July 2, 1923, Bnin [now part of Kórnik], Poland Wislawa Szymborska is a Polish poeters, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature, “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality”. She is admired for her direct and concise lyric poetry

Born: June 9, 1843, Prague, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [now in Czech Republic]Died: June 21, 1914, Vienna Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita Von Suttner was an Austrian writer and peace activist who in 1905 became the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her novel Die Waffen nieder (1889; Lay Down Your Arms, 1892) depicted the

Born: April 22, 1766, Paris, FranceDied: July 14, 1817, ParisGermaine de Staël was a French writer and intellectual, famed for her international salon. Her full name was Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Staël-Holstein. Born in Paris and generally known as Madame de Staël, she was the daughter of the French financier and statesman Jacques Necker.

Born: Aug 30, 1797, London, EnglandDied: Feb 1, 1851, London Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a English novelist. Daughter of the British philosopher William Godwin and the British author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, she was born in London, and privately educated. She met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in May 1814, and two months

Born: c. 966, JapanDied: c. 1025, JapanSei Shonagon was a diarist and poet, a witty, learned lady of the court, whose Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), apart from its brilliant and original Japanese prose style, is the best modern-day source of information on Japanese court life in the Heian period (784-1185). Sei Shonagon was the

Born: c. 610, Lesbos [now part of Greece]Died: c. 570 BC Sappho was Greek poeters, whose poetry was so renowned that Greek philosopher Plato referred to her two centuries after her death as the tenth muse. Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos (now Lésvos), probably in the city of Mytilini. Although the details

Born: July 1, 1804, ParisDied: June 8, 1876, Nohant, France George Sand, pseudonym of Amandine Aurore Lucile, Baronne Dudevant, was a French novelist of the romantic movement, whose irregular life and many love-affairs shocked Parisian society.Sand was born in Paris on July 1, 1804, the daughter of a French army officer named Dupin who was

Born: July 31, 1965, Chipping Sodbury,near Bristol, England J. K. Rowling is a British author, who writes about the magical adventures of a boy wizard named Harry Potter. The Harry Potter books dominated bestseller lists in the late 1990s and early 2000s, attracting fans worldwide among children and adults alike.Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born in

Born: July 28, 1866, South Kensington, Middlesex[now in Greater London], EnglandDied: Dec 22, 1943, Sawrey, Lancashire [now in Cumbria] Beatrix Potter was English writer and illustrator of children’s books, born in London, and privately educated. During most of her adult life, she lived in a farm cottage in Sawrey, Westmoreland County, where she kept many

Born: Oct. 27, 1872 or Oct 3, 1873, Baltimore, Md., U.S.Died: Sep 25, 1960, New York Emily post was an American authority on social behaviour who crafted her advice by applying good sense and thoughtfulness to basic human interactions.Emily Post was educated in private schools in New York City. A popular debutante, she married Edwin

Born: June 16, 1938, Lockport, New York, U.S.Joyce Carol Oates is an American author, known for the descriptive violence in her portrayals of American life. Born in Lockport, New York, Oates was educated at Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin, and Rice University. She taught at the University of Detroit from 1961 to 1967 and

Born: July 15, 1919, Dublin, IrelandDied: February 8, 1999, Oxford, Oxfordshire, EnglandIris (Jean) Murdoch was a British writer and philosopher, born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1948 she was appointed a fellow and tutor in philosophy at Oxford. Murdoch’s first published book, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953), is a study

Born: c. 978, Kyoto, JapanDied: c. 1014, KyotoMurasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, one of her country’s greatest writers, and the author of what is generally considered the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji (first trans. by Arthur Waley in 6 volumes, 1925-32). Little is known about the author (including her real name), except