Bookish birthdays for the week of May 8, 2022

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of May 8, 2022.

Thomas Pynchon (May 8, 1937): Pynchon won the Faulkner Foundation Award for his first novel, V, and continued his critical success with the National Book Award-winning Gravity’s Rainbow.

Pat Barker (May 8, 1943): Barker’s trilogy of novels about World War I — Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road — draw some inspiration from her grandfather’s wartime service in France.

J. M. Barrie (May 9, 1860): When Barrie was six, one of his brothers died, and his mother never recovered from the loss; much of his work, including Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, would reflect Barrie’s longing for the lost innocence of the days before his brother’s death.

Daphne Du Maurier (May 13, 1907): Du Maurier’s many critically and popularly acclaimed novels — including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and My Cousin Rachel — resulted in her being named a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire.

Armistead Maupin (May 13, 1944): Maupin launched his literary career with Tales of the City, published in serial form in the San Francisco Chronicle, and four of his five sequels to it were also first serialized.