Bookish birthdays for the week of March 21, 2021

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of March 21, 2021.

Louis L’Amour (March 22, 1908): L’Amour, the bestselling author of over 100 books (mostly westerns), was the first novelist to receive a Congressional Gold Medal.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919): Ferlinghetti is one of the founders of the Beat movement, and his poetry collection A Coney Island of the Mind was the best-selling book by a living American poet during the second half of the twentieth century.

Flannery O’Connor (March 25, 1925): O’Connor is known as a master of short stories, including her breakthrough collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and Other Stories and the National Book Award winner The Complete Stories. 

Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1914): Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for the plays A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and is also celebrated for The Glass Menagerie and The Night of the Iguana.

Erica Jong (March 26, 1942): Jong rose to fame with her first novel, Fear of Flying, and has since published more than twenty-five books (a mix of fiction and nonfiction) in forty-five languages.

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