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, then follow the links to their full biographies in one of our databases! Just log in with your last name and TCCL card number. 

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iaIsabel Allende (born Aug. 2, 1942): "Isabel Allende's private life has never been without a political dimension. Allende's father was a Chilean diplomat in Lima, Peru, when she was born there in 1942. Although she resided for much of her childhood in Santiago, Chile, her adolescence was spent traveling after her parents' divorce her mother remarried another diplomat who brought the family to Bolivia, Europe, and regions of the Middle East. Salvador Gossens Allende, Isabel's beloved uncle and godfather, participated in the organization of Chile's Socialist Party in 1933 and was elected to the Chilean legislature in 1937. In 1970 he became the first democratically elected Marxist to preside in Chile and in a Western nation. Shortly after President Allende's assassination in 1973 by right-wing military leaders who, with the help of CIA operatives and the U.S. State Department, violently toppled his socialist reform government, Isabel Allende, active in her opposition to the new dictatorship, was forced to flee Chile with her husband and children for fear of reprisal. In exile in Caracas, Venezuela, Allende began her career as a novelist." From her bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE. 

James Baldwin (born Aug. 2, 1924): "James Baldwin was an African American novelist, playwrite, and social critic famous for writing Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and many other books. He was also passionate in his pursuit of racial justice and sexual freedom through his writing." From his biography in our African American Experience database. Read more HERE.

ksKamila Shamsie (born Aug. 13, 1973): "A native of Pakistan, Kamila Shamsie wrote her first novel in English, the result of an upbringing and education that is dexterously chronicled in her 1998 debut, In the City by the Sea. Shamsie, like the protagonist Hasan, was born in Karachi, one of Pakistan's largest cities, and actual events from her childhood play an integral role in the turmoil of the young character's life. At the age of eleven, Hasan leads a pleasant life as the well-loved son of educated, liberal parents. His father is an attorney, and his artist mother runs a gallery. Both the father and an uncle, the popular head of a political party, have been educated at elite English universities--a legacy, in part, of Pakistan's former colonial ties to the British Empire--and rose to prominence after Pakistan gained independence in 1947." From her bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE. vl

Valeria Luiselli (born Aug. 16, 1983): "Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983. The daughter of a diplomat, she has lived in various countries around the globe, including Costa Rica, South Korea, South Africa, India, Spain, France, and the United States. In 2008 she moved to New York City, where she now lives with her husband, the writer Álvaro Enrigue. She teaches creative writing at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana and is studying for a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Columbia University. Luiselli, who writes in both Spanish and English, has collaborated as a writer with several art galleries and has worked as a librettist for the New York City Ballet." From her bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE.

V.S. Naipaul (born Aug. 17, 1932): "Anglo-Trinidadian writer V.S. Naipaul was one of Britain's most formidable literary talents of the late twentieth century. Knighted in 1990 and the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Oxford University graduate produced both acclaimed novels and insightful works of nonfiction in a career that spanned nearly 60 years. 'He saw the horror and terror waiting to be unleashed upon the world by half-baked revolutions, mutinies and holy wars and by fundamentalism and fanaticism of any kind,' asserted the Guardian's Kenneth Ramchand. 'He was considered by many to be the first modern global writer.'" From his bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE. 

sdSharon Draper (born Aug. 21, 1948): "As an author, poet, and master educator named 1997 U.S. Teacher of the Year, Sharon Draper has introduced thousands of children and young people to the world of words. Draper said that teaching has been her "calling and vocation," describing herself as a teacher who "teaches because I must. It is in my heart and soul; part of the definition of me. I end up teaching wherever I am." As a teacher who has also become a writer she has testified to the value of story and the power of words to generations of students. Her published work, including many young adult novels, series of juvenile fiction, and collections of poetry, has been grounded in the conviction that books can and must speak to the lives and dreams of young readers." From her bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE.

Dorothy Parker (born Aug. 22, 1893): "Known as 'the wittiest woman in America,' Dorothy Parker became a legend during the 1920s as much for her hilarious one-liners at the Algonquin Round Table as for her best-selling poetry, fiction, and reviews. While Parker's vast popularity stemmed from her ability to make people laugh, simmering beneath the surface of her short stories and verse is a suppressed rage at the pervasive inequalities of American society." From her bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE.

pcPaulo Coelho (born Aug. 24, 1947): "Brazilian author Paulo Coelho inhabits one of the most coveted strata in his profession as a writer whose sales tally has surpassed the 200-million mark. Much of his success stems from the enduring popularity of The Alchemist, an allegorical tale first published in 1988 and translated into 70 languages. In a Times of London profile, journalist Penny Wark proffered a theory about the global level of celebrity that Coelho has achieved through his novels. 'He writes simple tales in simple language about the quest for spiritual fulfillment, about personal development,' Wark reflected, adding that 'few can match his ability to engage with so many people in so many corners of the world.'" From his bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE.

JWJeanette Winterson (born Aug. 27, 1959): "Jeanette Winterson is generally recognized as one of Britain's most interesting and innovative novelists. She has challenged the conventions of the novel form, claiming that her writing is closer to poetry than the traditional novel. Her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the Whitbread Prize for best first novel in 1985, and was adapted for BBC TV by Winterson herself in 1990. Partly based upon her own early life and yet not, she insists, straightforwardly autobiographical, Oranges put representations of sexual love between young women openly onto the agenda. Winterson is a lesbian and a writer who celebrates and describes love between women, and between those whose sexuality is shifting or indeterminate: she has a corresponding passion for language and a firm belief in the transforming power of art. 'Words,' she says in a BBC TV interview, 'are weapons and also love affairs.'" From her bio in the Biography in Context database. Read more HERE.

rdRita Dove (born Aug. 28, 1952): "Rita Dove was the first black female poet laureate consultant to the Library of Congress in 1993 and 1994. Dove is also an essayist, novelist, and short story writer. Among her works are nine volumes of poetry. The winner of numerous awards, including Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships and more than 20 honorary degrees, in 1987 Dove was the first African American woman since Gwendolyn Brooks to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry." From her bio in the African American Experience database. Read more HERE.