Meny
  • 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...

    Further reading

  • 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...

    Further reading

Sample of Authors

Portrait of Graham Greene

Greene, Graham
1904 - 1991

Henry Graham Greene was a British author and journalist born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, who became one of the foremost...

Further reading
Portrait image of Helen MacInnes

MacInnes, Helen
1907 - 1985

Helen Clark MacInnes was a Scottish-American author born in Glasgow. She moved with her family to Helensburgh in 1912 where...

Further reading
Portrait image of Alexander McCall Smith

McCall Smith, Alexander
1948 -

The British author Alexander McCall Smith – called Sandy by family and friends – was born in Bulawayo in the then British col...

Further reading
Portrait of Michael Moorcock

Moorcock, Michael
1939 -

The British author, editor and musician Michael John Moorcock is something of a phenomenon. He began his career as the...

Further reading