Bookish birthdays for the week of May 31, 2026

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of May 31, 2026.

Colm Tóibín (May 30, 1955): Tóibín spent years as a journalist and travel writer before turning his focus to novels, including such acclaimed works as Brooklyn, The Master, and House of Names.

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819): Whitman’s seminal collection Leaves of Grass didn’t meet with much US acclaim in his lifetime, though he’s now considered one of America’s most significant nineteenth-century poets.

Svetlana Alexievich (May 31, 1948): Alexievich, an investigative reporter, has used her work as the basis for five “documentary novels” about life during and after the Soviet Union; for this, she received the Nobel Prize. 

Colleen McCullough (June 1, 1938): McCullough is best known for The Thorn Birds, which earned her fame and a record advance of nearly $2 million, and her seven-book Masters of Rome series.

Thomas Hardy (June 2, 1840): Hardy is celebrated as a 19th-century writer, most notably for Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, and a 20th-century poet.

Fredrik Backman (June 2, 1981): Backman, known for such novels as A Man Called Ove and Anxious People, is a New York Times bestseller whose books have been published in more than forty countries.

Franz Kafka (June 3, 1883): Kafka only allowed a few of his works, like “The Metamorphosis,” to be published during his lifetime, and told his executor to burn leftover manuscripts (an order he disobeyed).

Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926): Ginsberg’s epic poem “Howl” is considered one of the most important works from the Beat literary movement.

Larry McMurtry (June 3, 1936): Among McMurtry’s thirty-plus novels are Terms of Endearment (adapted into a movie) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove.

Federico García Lorca (June 5, 1898): Lorca, considered among the most important Spanish playwrights and poets of the twentieth century, is best known for his poetry collection Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) and his play Blood Wedding.

Ken Follett (June 5, 1949): Follett’s breakthrough novel, Eye of the Needle, was made into a film, and five of his novels — The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, On Wings of Eagles, The Third Twin, The Pillars of the Earth, and World Without End — also have a corresponding TV miniseries.

Rick Riordan (June 5, 1964): While popularly known for his Percy Jackson series (and other young adult novels), Riordan has also received the top three US awards for mysteries – the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Shamus — for his Tres Navarre series. 

Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875): Mann, best known for Death in Venice, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 and is considered the best German novelist of the 20th century.

V.C. Andrews (June 6, 1924): Andrews has written over seventy novels — including, perhaps infamously, Flowers in the Attic — and her work has been translated into twenty-five foreign languages.