TCCL Celebrates: May Authors

Each month, we highlight birthdays of authors for you to discover through print and digital items as well as online biographies. In the post below, click on the author’s name to find titles by them in our catalog. Read a bit about each author below and find their full biography in the database listed.

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May Sarton (born May 3, 1912): "May Sarton was a prolific author who was long considered by her very loyal readers to be a gifted and sensitive writer of poetry, novels, and journals. Although at first overlooked by literary critics, in the later part of her career reviewers and feminist academics began to discover Sarton's work, lauding her as an important contemporary American author.

“Critics have found Sarton's poetry, fiction, and autobiographical writings to be inspirational, touching, honest, and thought-provoking. She examines such universally appealing themes as love, friendship, relationships, and the search for self-knowledge, personal fulfillment, and inner peace. In her many books, Sarton also explores many social and political concerns, including issues of feminism and sexuality."

From Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors in the Biography in Context database. Find Biography in Context HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them

Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939): “Israeli author Amos Oz has been on the short list for the Nobel Prize for many years. Writing in Hebrew, Oz has produced since 1965 a body of work--over two dozen titles in both fiction and nonfiction--that not only entertains, but also educates. On the occasion of Oz's seventieth birthday in 2009, New York Times contributor Ethan Bronner wrote of the author: ‘For four decades Amos Oz has been known in Israel and abroad for two things, his fervently liberal politics and his intimately observed fiction.’ Brunner further noted that Oz's ‘novels and stories are not allegories on the Palestinian conflict but deeply human tales of ambiguity and sadness. His political essays, meanwhile, make their point with complete transparency.’”

From Authors and Artists for Young Adults in the Biography in Context database. Find Biography in Context HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Nellie Bly (born May 5, 1864): "Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, who wrote under the pen name Nellie Bly, was a journalist who gained nationwide fame for her investigative reports on abuses in various companies and public institutions. Her stories were not only reform-minded, but filled with first-hand accounts. She undertook such stunts as having herself admitted to an insane asylum, working in a factory sweatshop, and getting herself arrested in order to get a glimpse of the experiences of some of the most downtrodden of urban America. In her greatest escapade, Bly set out to imitate Jules Verne's imaginary trip around the world in less than 75 days while Americans anxiously awaited tales of her travels. Bly distinguished herself as a reporter at a time when the field was dominated by men, and her accomplishments won a greater measure of acceptance for other women journalists."

From Encyclopedia of World Biography Online in the Biography in Context database. Find Biography in Context HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942): Argentinean-born author and scholar Ariel Dorfman is best known for his opposition to political oppression in Chile. Since his 1973 expulsion from his adopted country for his outspoken resistance to dictator Augusto Pinochet, Dorfman's poetry, nonfiction, short stories, plays, and acclaimed novels that probe the terror of dictatorship and the despair of exile.

Joy Harjo (born May 9): "Joy Harjo is a Muscogee Creek, poet, writer, musician, and teacher. Her poetry is noted for emotional and mythic intensity in describing and connecting oral tradition to contemporary society, with a focus on identity, justice for the oppressed, and a relationship between landscape and history. Harjo's poetry challenges the contemporary Western concepts of linear time and history with the oral traditional concept of the "spiral" memory of storytelling, which emphasizes the cyclical nature of history and human lifecycles. Harjo became the first Native American to hold the title of U.S. poet laureate in 2019."

From her biography in the American Indian Experience database. Find the database HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Christopher Paul Curtis (born May 10, 1953): "The life story of Christopher Paul Curtis has a fairytale ending. After working more than a dozen years on an automobile assembly line, Curtis wrote two critically acclaimed children's books. His 1995 novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 and his 1999 novel Bud, Not Buddy both won the Newbery Medal, which is one of the most coveted prizes in children's literature. The success of these books enabled Curtis to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a writer."

From Contemporary Black Biography in the Biography in Context database. Find Biography in Context HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Albert Murray (born May 12, 1916): “Albert Murray was an African American essayist, novelist, cultural, and music critic. At a time when black militancy was in vogue and identity politics were being promoted, Murray advanced a concept of national identity that challenged prevailing norms. By Murray's estimation, African Americans are no less and no more American than others of different ethnic descent. The combined folklores of white supremacy and black pathology, he asserted, disguise the fact that all Americans are multicolored. Murray sustained this opinion throughout his prolific and long career and never retreated from the belief that just as the products of African American creativity belong to and describe a uniquely American idiom, so too are all the artifacts of Western culture available to the black artist.”

From his biography in the African American Experience database. Find the database HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Kadir Nelson (born May 15, 1974): "Kadir Nelson is one of the most sought-after artists and illustrators working today. Best known for his oil paintings depicting African-American people and history, Nelson's work often focuses on the struggles and triumphs of ordinary African-Americans, as well as those of famous Black people such as Nelson Mandela, Jackie Robinson, and Harriet Tubman. Nelson's large, intimate, and almost photographic paintings invite viewers into the lives of legends as well as the nameless faces of countless African Americans who have played important roles in resisting slavery and racial discrimination. His work, which hangs in private collections and public galleries around the world, can also be found in numerous award-winning children's picture books, some of which Nelson has both written and illustrated."

Mikhail Bulgakov (born May 15, 1940): On 18 April 1930, Mikhail Bulgakov ate his lunch in his Moscow flat and then lay down for his customary nap. However, he was soon roused by the telephone ringing, and shortly after that his second wife, Lyuba, came in to tell him that someone from the Central Committee (of the Communist party) wished to speak to him. Bulgakov assumed it was a malicious trick of some kind - such things were common at that time, a grimly antic precursor of the persecutions to come - but when he picked up the handset he heard a voice say, "Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov?" and, when he affirmed this, "Comrade Stalin will talk to you now". Immediately afterwards Bulgakov heard a voice with a distinct Georgian accent - it was indeed the dictator on the line.

From the Research Topic about him in eLibrary. Find eLibrary HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Grace Lin (born May 17, 1974): "Boston-based illustrator and author Grace Lin shares her Asian-American heritage in the colorful artwork she creates for both original picture-book stories such as Robert's Snow, Bringing in the New Year, and The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale and texts by other writers. In addition, she has written several novels that echo her picture-book themes, among them The Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat, and Where the Mountains Meet the Moon."

Eloise Greenfield (born May 17, 1929): “Eloise Greenfield is an acclaimed writer of prose and poetry for younger readers whose fiction is admired for presenting strong portraits of loving African American families. Mindful of children's need to understand their cultural antecedents, she has also penned a handful of biographies of African Americans. Greenfield stated that her goal in writing is ‘to give children words to love, to grow on.’ The author of more than a dozen prize-winning books for children, Greenfield admits that, since her own childhood, she has loved the sounds and rhythms of words. In her stories and poetry she tries to produce what she calls ‘word-madness,’ a creative, joyous response brought on by reading.”

Lorraine Hansberry (born May 19, 1930): "Lorraine Hansberry was one of the most influential playwrights in American theater. In 1959, she became the first African American woman to have one of her plays featured on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun."

From her biography in the African American Experience database. Find the database HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

Jamaica Kincaid (born May 25, 1949): "Jamaica Kincaid is an author from Antigua and Barbuda who has written a variety of short stories, novels, and essays. She was born Elaine Potter Richardson on the island of Antigua in 1949 and was educated in the British colonial system. At age 17, Kincaid left Antigua for New York to become an au pair. Kincaid also worked as a staff writer at several magazines including The Village Voice and The New Yorker, where her first short stories were published. These short stories were compiled later into her first book At the Bottom of the River (1992)."

Madeleine Thien (born May 25, 1974): "Madeleine Thien published her first collection of short stories, Simple Recipes, in 2001. Thien's tales of fractured family relationships and painful coming-of-age moments are mainly set in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she was born to Malaysian-Chinese immigrants in 1974. Some of the stories were completed in the early 1990s, when Thien was a student at the University of British Columbia. Whatever their provenance, the seven pieces collected in Simple Recipes earned Thien an international, and appreciative, audience."

Rachel Carson (born May 27, 1907): ”One of the most famous ecologists of the 20th century, Rachel Louise Carson wrote about the dangers of tampering with and harming the natural environment in a number of books, including her most famous, Silent Spring. Her talent as a writer did much to advance her scientific beliefs and made her a beloved science writer for the layperson. One of the most dramatic results of her environmental activism was the U.S. government's order to stop spraying the pesticide DDT in 1964. This was one of the sparks that launched the environmental movement in the 1970s.”

From the Research Topic about her in eLibrary. Find eLibrary HERE, then log in with your last name and TCCL card number to search this author's name and explore the resources about them.

André Brinke (born May 29, 1935): “André Brink was an Afrikaner, novelist, playwright, essayist, and educator. Although he came of age during the country's apartheid era, Brink repudiated those policies. He left to study in Paris in 1960, but was drawn back to the land of his birth to witness and record its turmoil and injustice. Earning both international recognition and governmental censure for his work in the years that followed, Brink became known as one of the most prominent literary voices to speak out against white oppression of black South Africans.”