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It is 86 years today since Joyce Carol Oates was born.
American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the state of New York. The family had a difficult economic situation and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence with her paternal grandparents on a farm in Erie. As a child, she liked to read and write; she got her first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from her g...
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It is 67 years today since Alexandra Marinina was born.
Alexandra Marinina is the pseudonym of Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva, a Russian author born in Lviv, western Ukraine. Her father, who died in 1973, was a police officer and her mother a lawyer. When she was still young, the family moved to Leningrad (now St.Petersburg) and then to Moscow. She attended an English-language school in Leningrad, and the Rimsky-Korsakov conservatory in Moscow. She...
Sample of Authors
![Portrait image of Josef Skvorecky](images/writer/1591/619ae4238123b245c013d8c82811e2c7bcf89e0688c60.jpg)
Skvorecky, Josef
1924 - 2012
The Czech author, editor, translator and (film)scriptwriter Josef Škvorecký was born in Náchod, in Bohemia. He is co...
Further reading![Portrait image of W. Somerset Maugham](images/writer/1148/6213c7f2aba9b793c474f4175628697c0477111e04ab9.jpg)
Maugham, W. Somerset
1874 - 1965
William Somerset Maugham was a British author born in Paris. His father was a lawyer at the British Embassy there. When...
Further reading![Portrait image of Sara Blædel](images/writer/4771/6220c91a1bdb97127328bc5e00834b4044b7e3803ab29.jpg)
Blædel, Sara
1964 -
The Danish journalist and author Sara Blædel spent her early life in the Copenhagen district of Østerbro. When she was a...
Further reading![Portrait image of Leslie Thomas](images/writer/2396/6193e1b8ec9bf95978d311a1c85d5e378b889d1c35dcc.jpg)
Thomas, Leslie
1931 - 2014
The Welsh author Leslie Thomas was born in Newport, South Wales. He is one of the most popular British late 20th century...
Further reading