Anniversaries, 12 March
Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist and author of thrillers. He was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is of Norwegian descent. He was a great nature lover even as a child, and became an investigative journalist in order to look into the exploitation of the Florida wetlands. His father gave him a typewriter when he was six years old; at high school he co-founded the satirical magazine More Trash.
Hiaasen enrolled at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, in 1970, and the same year he...
Anniversaries, 12 March
Theodor Kallifatides
Theodor Kallifatides was born in the village of Molaoi in the Peloponnese in Greece. His father was an elementary school teacher and had come to Greece as a refugee from Turkey. In 1941, Molaoi was occupied by the Germans and his father – who was a socialist – was imprisoned. After his release, the family moved to Athens where Kallifatides matriculated in 1956, and then started Theatre Studies. After doing his military service, which lasted 27 months, he worked for a short time as an actor, but...
Anniversaries, 12 March
Leif G.W. Persson
Leif Gustav Willy Persson is a Swedish author and criminologist who previously worked for the Swedish Police and the Ministry of Justice. Persson was appointed Professor of Criminology at the Swedish National Police Academy in 1991, a post he threatened to resign from in 2008. He was persuaded to continue working until 2012 when he retired at the age of 67. Persson has also participated in the television show Efterlyst (Wanted) since 1998.
Leif G. W. Persson was born in Stockholm where he has...
Anniversaries, 12 March
Jenny Erpenbeck
The German author and theatre director Jenny Erpenbeck grew up in central East Berlin where she still lives. Erpenbeck's maternal grandfather, Fritz Erpenbeck, was a dramaturge, journalist and author; her grandmother, Hedda Zinner, an award-winning novelist; her father, John Erpenbeck, is a prominent physicist, psychologist and novelist; Jenny's mother, Doris Kilias, was a linguist and translator specialising in Arabic. This literary family tradition is no weight on Erpenbeck's mind, however....
Anniversaries, 12 March
Harry Harrison
The Irish-American author and illustrator Harry (Henry Maxwell) Harrison wrote virtually only science fiction and fantasy. That doesn’t prevent his writing from having a remarkable scope: his books comprise everything from serious and shocking dystopias such as the classic Make Room! Make Room! (1966), to satirical, partly farcical novels like Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965) and the suite about ‘Slippery Jim’ DiGriz, notorious as the Stainless Steel Rat, which was launched in bookshops as The Sta...
Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images (2014)
Sample of authors
Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong is a Chinese author, poet, translator and scholar. He was born in Shanghai and grew up in post-revolution China. During the Cultural Revolution, when students were forced into the countryside to "learn from the peasants", Qiu remained in the city as he was often bedridden due to a respiratory problem. With nothing to do during long, tedious days he began to practice tai chi in the...