Birthdays: Studs Terkel (1912), Adrienne Rich (1929), Bruce Coville (1950), Margaret Rey (1906)

Tip: In fiction writing, numbers under 100 are generally spelled out: fifteen, twenty-nine, etc. (Not always, though. After all, this is grammar and there are no absolutes.)

Thought for the day: “Every book is like starting over again. I’ve written books every way possible – from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.” – Bruce Coville

Jumpstart: You’re a master spy ala James Bond. What kind of interesting tools does Q provide you with? What are you going to save the world from?

Writing:

Louis “Studs” Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.

Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century”, and was credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.” Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by renowned poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Auden went on to write the introduction to the published volume. She famously declined the National Medal of Arts, protesting the vote by House Speaker Newt Gingrich to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Bruce Farrington Coville (born May 16, 1950) is an author of young adult fiction. Enraptured with reading novels at a young age, Coville was first published in 1977 and has over 100 books in his repertoire.

Margret Elizabeth Rey (May 16, 1906 – December 21, 1996) was a German-born American writer and illustrator, known best for the Curious George series of children’s picture books that she and her husband H. A. Rey created from 1939 to 1966.