Authors' Birthdays: October

Posted by Sharyn Skeeter Oct 8, 2006

October 7: Imamu Amiri Baraka is a prize-winning playwright, poet, critic and activist who was appointed poet laureate of New Jersey. Among his many books are Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Blues People, Dutchman and The Slave, and The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader.

October 12: Alice Childress (1920-1994) was a playwright and novelist. Her plays include Florence, Mojo, Wedding Band, and Moms.. In 1978, she wrote the screenplay for the film based on her novel, A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich.

October 12: Ann Petry (1908-1997) was a novelist and children’s book writer. Her first novel, The Street, was the 1946 winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. Her children’s books were Harriet Tubman and Tituba of Salem Village.

October 13: Arna Bontemps (1902-1973) was in the forefront of the New Negro Movement. He published over 20 books of poetry, plays, children’s books, and literary anthologies, most of which were related to the Harlem Renaissance. A museum in his birthplace—Alexandria, Louisiana—is dedicated to his work.

October 18: Terry McMillan is the author of the bestselling novels Disappearing Acts, Mama, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, A Day Late and a Dollar Short,and The Interruption of Everything. She edited an anthology of contemporary African-American writing, Breaking Ice.

October 18: Ntozake Shange is a playwright, poet, novelist, and children’s book author who is well known for her “choreopoem,” For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow Is Enuf, which was produced on Broadway and in film.

October 21: Ahmos Zu-Bolton (1946-2005) was a literary and spoken word poet and playwright who founded the arts journal HooDoo. He published several poetry collections.

October 27: Ronald Fair is a novelist and short story writer. The 1975 movie, Cornbread, Earl and Me was based on his novel, Hog Butcher. Three of his other books are Many Thousand Gone, We Can’t Breathe, and World of Nothing.