I’m going to start something new this year and will hopefully keep it up for you for the year. I am going to feature other authors, some of whom I’ve read, some I haven’t, some are living, some are not. But maybe you’ll find someone here you’ll enjoy.

Birthdays: Ouida (1839), James Frazer (1854), E.M. Forster (1879), Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897), J.D. Salinger (1919), Mary Norton (1903), Audrey Wurdemann (1911), Gina Berriault (1926), Ernest Tidyman (1928), Mary Ann Shaffer (1934), Olivia Goldsmith (1949), James Richardson (1960), Claudia Rankine (1963).

Quote: “I think the first idea—or first feeling—of The Borrowers came through my being shortsighted: when others saw the far hills, the distant woods, the soaring pheasant, I, as a child, would turn sideways to the close bank, the tree roots, and the tangled grasses.” – Mary Norton (author of “The Borrowers”)

“The king died and then the queen died. That is a story. The king died and the queen died of grief. That is a plot.” – E.M. Forster

Audrey Wurdemann at 24 was the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection “Bright Ambush”

Catherine Bowen won the National Book Award for her nonfiction like “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin”

Claudia Rankine won the NAACP Image Award for poetry in 2015 for “Citizen: An American Lyric”.Gina Berriault won multiple awards for her short stories including the O’Henry

I read “The Borrowers” as a youngster and loved them. I can’t say the same for E.M.Forster’s books “Howard’s End” or “A Passage to India”. Famous books, but not my favorite genres. I did read Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” when in high school, but again, not a favorite. James Frazer’s “The Golden Bough” is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion and is *the* book to study when planning a fantasy world.