Riku Onda (恩田 陸) [Nanae Kumagai (熊谷 奈苗)] (born October 25, 1964) Japanese novelist - Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight (2007/2020)
The Goodreads page for Riku Onda here
Watch an (English language) review/description of Riku Onda's mystery novel, The Aosawa Murders
here
Suheir Hammad (born October 25, 1973) Palestinian-American poet – Breaking Poems (2008)
Suheir Hammad's biography here and here
Read Hammad's poem "a prayer band"
Suheir Hammad talks about her writing
here
Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) U.S. novelist – French Braid (2022)
Visit Anne Tyler's website https://annetyler.com/
A 2022 Anne Tyler interview here
The majority of Anne Tyler's 24 books are about family. And the majority of Anne's Tyler's 24 books are set in Baltimore. Now, if we were talking about any other writer, you would be excused for wondering if they might be stuck in a rut. But Tyler's gift is that each story, each character is distinct, even as she builds on themes from one book to the next. Tyler's new novel, "French Braid," is set, you guessed it, in Baltimore. And it tracks one family, the Garretts, across decades and across generations.
A review of Tyler's novel French Braid
here
Read an excerpt from French Braid here
Zadie Smith (born October 25, 1975) U.K. novelist – Swing Time
Read more about Zadie Smith here
Watch Zadie Smith and Daniel Kehlmann discuss her novel Intimations
and both authors' experience in New York during the Covid pandemic
here
Geoffrey Chaucer (born October 25, 1342 or 1343) British writer – The Canterbury Tales
Watch a short biography of Geoffrey Chaucer
Read "A Summary and Analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’" here
Watch an English class about Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
here
Christos Tsiolkas (born October 25, 1965) Australian novelist – The Slap (2008)
Read more about Christos Tsiolkas here
Read about Tsiolkas' novel 7-1/2 here
While it doesn’t deal explicitly with the pandemic, Christos Tsiolkas’ new novel deals with isolation, a retreat to interior life, and at the conclusion, a cataclysmic global event that reshapes the world.
“Because the world had narrowed so much, it allowed me a focus and a patience. If there hadn’t been a pandemic, I might not have sat in the stillness. I couldn’t travel, we weren’t going out, so I wasn’t waking up with a hangover saying ‘I’m not going to write today’. I had this space to concentrate,” he tells Guardian Australia.
Christos Tsiolkas talks about his life and his writing
here