Bookish birthdays for the week of February 1, 2026

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of February 1, 2026.

Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901): Hughes was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, writing poetry (“The Weary Blues,” “I, Too,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”), essays (“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”), and nonfiction, and became the first black American to support himself solely from writing and lecturing.

Muriel Spark (February 1, 1918): In addition to the well-known The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark was also acclaimed for The Comforters and Memento Mori (adapted for the stage and screen).

Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933): Price wrote novels, poems, plays, and Biblical essays throughout his life, much of it influenced by and set in the South; his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, won the William Faulkner Foundation Award, and a later novel, Kate Vaiden, received the National Books Critics Circle Award.

James Joyce (February 2, 1882): While Joyce is famous for his novels Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he is also considered to have written one of the greatest short stories — “The Dead” from Dubliners.

Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905): Rand’s bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are credited with influencing political schools of thought, such as libertarianism and the Tea Party movement.

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874): While Stein was also a writer, she’s perhaps better known for hosting literary salons for the authors she dubbed “The Lost Generation”; her most celebrated work was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and the oft-quoted line “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”

James A. Michener (February 3, 1907): Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific won a Pulitzer Prize and also inspired the musical South Pacific, which too went on to win a Pulitzer.

Joan Lowery Nixon (February 3, 1927): Nixon, who wrote historical fiction and mystery novels for young readers, is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award; The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Seance, The Other Side of Dark, and The Name of the Game Was Murder were her winning titles.

William S. Burroughs (February 5, 1914): Burroughs, a member of the Beat Generation, is best known for Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict and Naked Lunch.

Christopher Marlowe (February 6, 1564): Marlowe is considered the most important predecessor to William Shakespeare, with his famous plays including Tamburlaine the Great and The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus.

Sir Thomas More (February 7, 1478): More is most famous for his Utopia, though his History of King Richard III, which influenced William Shakespeare, is the first masterpiece of English historiography.

Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812): Dickens was widely celebrated in his time and remains so to this day for such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations.

Laura Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867): Wilder wrote her first novel, Little House in the Big Woods, at age sixty-five; the series it launched has sold over 60 million copies in more than 100 countries.

Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885): Lewis, author of Babbitt and Main Street, was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.