#Authors born on April 17: Karen Blixen (Out of Africa), Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey), Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (“The Tunesmith”), Cynthia Ozick (Foreign Bodies), and Nick Hornby (High Fidelity). #booksky

My story "20 Questions for Mr. Wizard" (a Terry Pratchett pastiche) will appear in the May 2026 issue of Dirty Magick Magazine (dirtymagickmagazine.com).

#Authors born on April 16: Anatole France (Revolt of the Angels), Grace Livingston Hill (The Girl from Montana), Gertrude Chandler Warner (The Boxcar Children), Spike Milligan (The Goon Show), Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), 1/2

#Authors born on April 15: Leonardo da Vinci (polymath), Henry James (The Turn of the Screw), Corrie Ten Boom (The Hiding Place), Helene Hanff (84, Charing Cross Road), Sally Miller Gearhart (The Wanderground), 1/2

@jeffvandermeer.bsky.social Have you ever entered any literary contests that required a submission fee?

#Authors born on April 14: James Branch Cabell (Jurgen), Arnold J. Toynbee (A Study of History), Jack McDevitt (Seeker), Erich von Däniken (Chariot of the Gods), Terrance Dicks (Doctor Who), Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix), and Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). #booksky

#Authors born on Apr 13: Nella Larsen (Passing), Marguerite Henry (King of the Wind), Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Eudora Welty (The Optimist’s Daughter), Seamus Heaney (poet), Jean Marie Stine (Season of the Witch), Christopher Hitchens, and Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides). #booksky

Orban lost in Hungary? And conceded? Miracles do happen.

#Authors born on April 12 include Beverly Cleary (Henry Huggins), Carol Emshwiller (“I Live with You”), Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular), Tom Clancy (The Hunt for Red October), Scott Turow (Presumed Innocent), and Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air). #booksky

I can't file my tax return electronically because TurboTax is incorrectly rounding my W-2s. I know, I know, I shouldn't use Intuit's TurboTax desktop software (or anything by Intuit, to be frank). But I don't want to enter my information into an online form either.

#Authors born on April 11 include Peter O’Donnell (Modesty Blaise), Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs), Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina), Melanie Tem (Prodigal), James Patrick Kelly (Think Like a Dinosaur), Byron Preiss (book packager), and Julie Czerneda (The Gossamer Mage). #booksky

#Authors born on April 10 include Lew Wallace (Ben-Hur), Lenin (revolutionary), Montague Summers (Malleus Maleficarum) Anna Kavan (Asylum Piece), Paul Theroux (The Mosquito Coast), Stuart Dybek (poetry) Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird), and John M. Ford (Growing Up Weightless). #booksky

#Authors born on April 9: Elias Lönnrot (Kalevala), Charles Baudelaire (The Flowers of Evil), Leonard Wibberley (The Mouse That Roared), Fern Michaels (Family Blessings), Barrington J. Bayley (The Zen Gun), and Margaret Peterson Haddix (Shadow Children). #booksky

#Authors born on April 8: Hope Mirrlees (Lud-in-the-Mist), Ralph Milne Farley (pulps), James Herbert (The Rats), Tom Jolly (Wiz-War), Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible), Cecilia Tan (Circlet Press), Nnedi Okorafor (Binti), and Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars). #booksky

#Authors born on April 7: William Wordsworth (poet), Henry Kuttner (short stories), James White (Sector General), Donald Barthelme (short stories), Susan C. Petrey (Gift of Blood), and Janis Ian (“At Seventeen”). #booksky

#Authors born on April 5: Frank R. Stockton (“The Lady, or the Tiger?”), Robert Bloch (Psycho), Arthur Hailey (Airport), A.C. Crispin (TV tie-ins), Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), and Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches). #booksky

#Authors born on April 4: Eliza Parsons (The Mysterious Warning), Stanley G. Weinbaum (“A Martian Odyssey”), Marguerite Duras (The Lover), Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Dan Simmons (Hyperion), and Gemma Files (Experimental Film). #booksky

I must really be an author now -- I finally received my first book club spam scam email.

#Authors born on April 3: Washington Irving (Rip Van Winkle), Edward Everett Hale (The Man Without a Country), Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (Sir Rohan’s Ghost), Donald M. Grant (publisher), Jane Goodall (In the Shadow of Man), Reginald Hill (Dalziel and Pascoe), 1/2

#Authors born on April 2: Giacomo Casanova (Story of My Life), Hans Christian Anderson (“The Ugly Duckling”), Émile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart), George MacDonald Fraser (Flashman), Sue Townsend (Adrian Mole), Joan D. Vinge (The Snow Queen), and Jennifer Rowe (Delora Quest). #booksky

#Authors born on April 1 include John Wilmot (A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind), Edgar Wallace (King Kong), Anne McCaffrey (Dragonflight), Ishihara Fujio (“The Light Century”), W. Paul Ganley (Weirdbook), and Samuel R. Delany (Dhalgren). #booksky

#Authors born on March 31 include Andrew Lang (The Blue Fairy Book), Octavio Paz (“Sunstone”), John Fowles (The French Lieutenant’s Woman), John Jakes (Kent Family Chronicles), Marge Piercy (He, She and It), Scott Edelman (Eating the Fantastic), and Ian McDonald (Brasyl). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 30: Anna Sewell (Black Beauty), Chad Oliver (The Shores of Another Sea), Tom Sharpe (Riotous Assembly), Dennis Etchison (The Dark Country), Jeanne Robinson (Stardance), and Cherry Adair (Kiss and Tell). #booksky

#Authors born on March 29 include G.K. Chesterton (The Man Who Was Thursday), Gentry Lee (Clarke collaborator), Eric Idle (The Road to Mars), Patricia Anthony (Brother Termite), Mary Gentle (Rats and Gargoyles), Jo Nesbø (Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder), 1/2

#Authors born Mar 28: Nelson Algren (The Man With the Golden Arm), A. Bertram Chandler (The Bitter Pill), Maxim Gorky (Summerfolk), Mario Vargas Llosa (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), Russell Banks (Continental Drift), Jennifer Weiner (Good in Bed), & Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada).

#Authors born on Mar 27: Charles Mackay (Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds), Margaret Irwin (Young Bess), Thorne Smith (Topper), Carl Barks (the “Good Duck Artist”), Joan Fleming (When I Grow Rich), Dick King-Smith (The Sheep-Pig), 1/2

#Authors born on March 26 include Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), A.E. Houseman (A Shropshire Lad), Robert Frost (“Mending Wall”), Joseph Campbell (The Hero of a Thousand Faces), Betty MacDonald (The Egg and I), Robert S. Carr (The Rampant Age), Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire), 1/2

#Authors born on March 25: Flannery O’Connor (Wise Blood), Gloria Steinem (Ms.), D.C. Fontana (TV), Jacqueline Lichtenberg (Sime-Gen), Jung Chang (Wild Swans), Susie Bright (Herotica), Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard), and Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux). #booksky

#Authors born on March 24: William Morris (The Wood Beyond the World), Donald Hamilton (Matt Helm), Robert T. Bakker (Raptor Red), Gary K. Wolfe (Soundings), Andrew Porter (Science Fiction Chronicle), and Tabitha King (Small World). #booksky

#Authors born on March 23 include H. Beam Piper (Little Fuzzy), Eleanor Cameron (The Court of the Stone Children), Wernher von Braun (rocket scientist), Neil Barron (Anatomy of Wonder), Winston Groom (Forrest Gump), Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (The Healer’s War), 1/2

#Authors born on Mar 22: Randolph Caldecott (picture books), Louis L’Amour (westerns), Stephen Sondheim (musical theater), Billy Collins (poetry), William Shatner (captain), Rudy Rucker (gonzo SF), James Patterson (thrillers), and Diane Mott Davidson (mysteries). #booksky

In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote: “In games, the object is to win, but in life the object is not to win. The object of the whole world is to preserve the game board and the pieces, and there is no such game.”

#Authors born on Mar 21 include Isabella Banks (The Manchester Man), Margaret Mahy (the Haunting), Terry Dowling (Rynosseros), Teresa Nielsen Hayden (Making Light), and Mark Waid (Astro City). #booksky

I just posted installment #25 of my reading diary, covering work by Jonathan Carroll, Matt Dinniman, Margaret Wise Brown, Don Breithaupt & Jeff Breithaupt, and Alexei and Cory Panshin. Interested? Here's a gift link for a year's subscription: www.patreon.com/gengelcox/re...

#Authors born on Mar 20 include Henrik Ibsen (The Doll’s House), Ernest Bramah (Kai Lung’s Golden Hours), Fredric Wertham (Seduction of the Innocent), Jack Cady (The Sons of Noah), Lois Lowry (The Giver), Pamela Sargent (Venus of Dreams), Louis Sacher (Holes), 1/2

#Authors born Mar 19: Tobias Smollett (The Adventures of Roderick Random), Sir Richard Francis Burton (Vikram and the Vampire), Rosa Mulholland (Dunmara), William Jennings-Bryan (Cross of Gold), Irving Wallace (The Word), Philip Roth (Portnoy’s Complaint), and Jim Turner (Golden Gryphon). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 18 include Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate), George Plimpton (Paper Lion), Christa Wolf (Cassandra), John Updike (Rabbit, Run), Sparkle Hayter (What’s a Girl Gotta Do?), and Max Barry (Jennifer Government). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 17: Kate Greenaway (Under the Window), Penelope Lively (Moon Tiger), James Morrow (Only Begotten Daughter), William Gibson (Neuromancer), Peter Robinson (“Missing in Action”), and Patrick McDonnell (Mutts). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 16: Sonia Greene (pulps), Sid Fleischman (The Whipping Boy), Margaret Weis (Dragonlance), P.C. Hodgell (God Stalk), Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic), and John Darnielle (Devil House). #booksky

#Authors born on March 15 include Lawrence Sanders (The Anderson Tapes), Lynda La Plante (Prime Suspect), Ben Okri (The Famished Road), and Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 14: Algernon Blackwood (Incredible Adventures), Albert Einstein (Relativity), Marguerite de Angeli (The Door in the Wall), Mildred Clingerman (A Cupful of Space), Max Shulman (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), Valerie Martin (Mary Reilly), Stephen Bisette (Swamp Thing), 1/2

#Authors born on Mar 13: Hugh Walpole (The Killer and the Slain), L. Ron Hubbard (scientology), Al Jaffe (Mad cartoonist), Ellen Raskin (The Westing Game), Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds), and Alastair Reynolds (Chasm City). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 12: Mary Hewitt (The Spider and the Fly), Jack Kerouac, Harry Harrison (Make Room! Make Room!), Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Virginia Hamilton (M.C. Higgins, the Great), Carl Hiaasen (Tourist Season), and Ruth Ozeki (A Tale for the Time Being). #booksky

#Authors born on 11 Mar: Lady Dorothy Mills (The Road to Timbuktu), Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), Lea Hernandez (Rumble Girls), Sylvia Day (Bared to You), Kieran Scott (I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader), and Christopher Rice (1,001 Dark Nights). #booksky

#Authors born on 10 Mar include Theodore R. Cogswell (The Wall Around the World), Marvin Kaye (The Fair Folk), Peter Tremayne (Sister Fidelma), Johanna Lindsey (Hearts Aflame), and Amy Sterling Casil (“To Kiss a Star”). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 9: Vita Sackville-West (The Land), Mickey Spillane (Kiss Me, Deadly), R.A. Montgomery (Choose Your Own Adventure), Keri Hulme (The Bone People), Pat Murphy (The Falling Woman), and Mark Cawardine (Last Chance to See). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 8: Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), Eric Linklater (The Wind on the Moon), John McPhee (Annals of the Former World), Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death), Peter Nicholls, Lazette Gifford (Farstep Station), and Eric Powell (The Goon). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 7: Paul Preuss (The Gates of Heaven), Stanley Schmidt (Analog editor), Elizabeth Moon (Remnant Population), E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey), and Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 6: Cyrano de Bergerac (A Voyage to the Moon), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (“How Do I Love Thee?”), Ring Lardner (You Know Me, Al), Will Eisner (The Spirit), William F. Nolan (Logan’s Run), Gabriel Garcia Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), Edward L. Ferman (F&SF editor), 1/2

#Authors born on Mar 5: Howard Pyle (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood), Mike Resnick (Kirinyaga), Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony), Robin Hobb (Farseer), Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves), and Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass). #booksky