Bookish birthdays for the week of August 8, 2021

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of August 8, 2021.

Marjorie Rawlings (August 8, 1896): Rawlings won the O. Henry Memorial Award for short stories for “Gal Young Un” five years before The Yearling won a Pulitzer Prize.

Izaak Walton (August 9, 1593): Walton’s The Compleat Angler is one of the most frequently reprinted books in English literature.

Daniel Keyes (August 9, 1927): Keyes is best known for his classic science-fiction work Flowers for Algernon; the first version of it was a novella that won the Hugo Award, and its expansion into a full-length novel then won a Nebula Award.

Jonathan Kellerman (August 9, 1949): Kellerman’s first novel, When The Bough Breaks, won Edgar Allan Poe and Anthony Boucher awards, became a bestseller, and was adapted into a movie; since its publication, Kellerman has released a bestselling crime novel every year.

Dorothy B. Hughes (August 10, 1904): Hughes’s hardboiled novels The Fallen Sparrow, Ride the Pink Horse, and In a Lonely Place all became films, and she later went on to become an Edgar Award-winning literary critic.

Joanna Cole (August 11, 1944): Cole began writing the Magic School Bus series for children in the 1980s and continued nearly until her 2020 death; the books have sold tens of millions of copies in that time.

Danielle Steel (August 14, 1947): Every single one of Steel’s 170-plus books has been a bestseller, including the recent Lost and Found and His Father’s Footsteps.

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