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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 M.W. Craven](images/writer/7411/5e789e3174fe84458a6af4b152c1ba1fc974b2ef11a23.jpg)
Craven, M.W.
1968 -
British crime writer, born in Carlisle in Cumbria, England. When M.W. (Michael William) ‘Mike’ Craven was still a child, the...
Further reading![Portrait of Patricia Highsmith](images/writer/758/6050de1407ec9c375ac3d3b949fa5d847943a10fa138b.jpg)
Highsmith, Patricia
1921 - 1995
Patricia Highsmith was an American author born in Fort Worth, Texas, as Mary Patricia Plangman. Both parents were artists...
Further reading![Portrait of Simon Brett](images/writer/243/6093e9139d7100d24c38e30cee65ac1745ecf8a6d0856.jpg)
Brett, Simon
1945 -
British author born in Worcester Park, Surrey. In 1949, the family moved to Ealing and a year later to Banstead where he...
Further reading![Portrait of James Runcie](images/writer/6910/609a865e9663069c740c8b1250023637b704a128b1afd.jpg)
Runcie, James
1959 -
James Robert Runcie is an author, documentary film maker, television producer and playwright. He was born in Cambridge and...
Further reading