Here comes June, always an ambiguous month in the Pacific Northwest. It can be as wet and cold as January, or as summery as anywhere else in the U.S. You just never know.
However, you may know what authors were born in June, at least if you care about such things and poke around the Internet. Here's a list of some of our writerly friends, some still with us, most not (except in their words, etc.) who were born in June, starting with a howl:
Allen Ginsberg
John Masefield
Ambrose Bierce (do high-schoolers still read "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"? I hope so.)
Anne Frank
Barbara Pym
Ben Jonson
Laurie Lee
Blaise Pascal (perhaps my favorite spiritual writer--and author of a book in a genre by itself, Pensees)
Lillian Hellman (if you haven't seen the film, Pentimento, I invite you to do so)
Louise Erdrich (that's what I like--someone who's at ease with both fiction and poetry)
Luigi Pirandello
Colin Wilson
Mark Van Doren
Mary McCarthy (attended school in Tacoma)
Elizabeth Bowen
Charles Kingsley
Octavia Butler (thanks for your final book, Ms. Butler, Fledgling, not to mention the other ones)
Jean Anoulih
Pierre Corneille (we bunched the difficult French-playwright names together)
Harrie Beecher Stowe
Saul Bellow
Thomas Hardy (a.k.a. Mr. Cheerful)
John Ciardi (I have fond memories of his radio-spot on NPR, called "Good Words to You," and I very much like his translation of Dante)
