Bookish birthdays for the week of November 15, 2020

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of November 15, 2020.

Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930): Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, is among the world’s most widely read African novels (if not the most read); he received the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 for his entire career of work.

Margaret Atwood (November 18, 1939): Atwood has twice won the Booker Prize, for The Blind Assassin and The Testaments (the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale) and has also received the PEN Pinter Prize for her lifetime of work.

Sharon Olds (November 19, 1942): Olds’s poetry collection The Dead and the Living won the National Book Critics Circle Award and is among the bestselling contemporary poetry volumes.

Nadine Gordimer (November 20, 1923): Gordimer, best known for her novels Burger’s Daughter and The Conservationist, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

Don DeLillo (November 20, 1936): Considered one of the greatest living American novelists, DeLillo’s most famous works include White Noise, Libra, and Underworld.

Birthdays sourced from Calendar of Literary Facts; biographical information sourced from Encyclopedia Britannica, Poetry Foundation, and publisher websites. Did we miss someone? Email and let us know!