TCCL Celebrates: May Authors

Each month, we highlight relevant author birthdays to celebrate. In the post below, click on the author’s name to find titles by them in our catalog. Read a little bit about each author, then follow the link to learn more about them in our Biography in Context database. To access this database, simply log in with your last name and TCCL card number.

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, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE. 

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 the American Indian Experience database. Read the full piece HERE. 

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, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE.

Daphne du Maurier (born May 13, 1903): "The author of 17 novels as well as works of biography, history, and volumes of short stories, Daphne du Maurier is best remembered as the author of Rebecca. Her seventh book, and her greatest bestseller on publication in 1938, Rebecca went on to be made as a notable film by Alfred Hitchcock (1940, starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier), was adapted by du Maurier for the stage, and has also been adapted for television more than once. Along with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (with which it was unfavourably compared by reviewers on first publication) it can be seen as the template for the modern gothic romance which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s." From the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghosts & Gothic, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE. 

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." From Contemporary Black Biography, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE.

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." From Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE. 

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 the African American Experience database by ABC-CLIO. Read the full piece HERE. 

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)." From the African American Experience database by ABC-CLIO. Read the full piece HERE. 

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." From Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE. 

Billie Letts (born May 30, 1938): "Novelist Billie Letts is an Oklahoma native who learned early the power that words can have. The first in her class to learn how to read, she was capable of tackling more advanced books even at an early age, she related in an autobiography on the Time Warner Bookmark Web site. Her parents did not have a great deal of money for extras, and there were only two books in the house: the Holy Bible and a copy of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre. She used the latter as the subject for a fourth-grade book report, "which caused such a stir that I knew I was on to something," she related in the online autobiography. "If I had the power to agitate a language-arts teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by simply writing about someone else's writing, how much power might I have in telling my own stories? I suspect it was then, at age nine, that the idea of becoming a writer took hold."" From Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, found in our Biography in Context database. Read the full piece HERE.