Bookish birthdays for the week of December 18, 2022

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of December 18, 2022.

Saki (December 18, 1870): Saki’s short stories “Tobermory,” “The Open Window,” “Sredni Vashtar,” “Laura,” and “The Schartz-Metterklume Method” are frequent entries in anthologies.

Kate Atkinson (December 20, 1951): Atkinson’s Life After Life was nominated for and won several awards; she is also the author of the bestselling Jackson Brodie novels.

Sandra Cisneros (December 20, 1954): Cisneros received a National Medal of the Arts for her lifetime of work, including poetry, short stories, and a novel; she is most famous for her bestseller The House on Mango Street, which has been translated into over twenty languages.

Rebecca West (December 21, 1892): West reported on the Nürnberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which became A Train of Powder, and wrote about the Balkans in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon; she also wrote several novels, including The Return of the Soldier and The Fountain Overflows.

Jean Racine (December 22, 1639): Best known for his plays like Phèdre, Racine is considered the first modern poet and also the first French author to live off his writing.

Norman Maclean (December 23, 1902): Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only of his work to be published during his lifetime, but the posthumously published Young Men and Fire became a bestseller and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. 

Donna Tartt (December 23, 1963): Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize for The Goldfinch and is also well-known for her novels The Secret History and The Little Friend. 

Matthew Arnold (December 24, 1822): Arnold gained prominence in his lifetime for his literary criticism; his poetry, which preceded his critical work, has earned him posthumous honor for such works as “Dover Beach.”

Mary Higgins Clark (December 24, 1929): Clark’s first suspense novel, Where Are The Children?, set her on the path to becoming the Queen of Suspense — she now has nearly forty bestsellers under her belt and a mystery award named after her.

Stephenie Meyer (December 24, 1973): Meyer, whose Twilight series has sold over 100 million copies globally, became the first author to sweep the first four slots on USA TODAY’s bestseller list.