7 Author Shoutouts | Authors We Love To Recommend

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Here are 7 Author Shoutouts for this week. Find your favorite author or discover an author whose work you have not yet read.

Don DeLillo

An Author Shoutout to Don DeLillo, born in New York City, who received praise as an author for his novel White Noise in 1985, earning him widespread recognition and the National Book Award for fiction. He was also honored with the PEN/Faulkner Award for Mao II, a book that explores terrorism and the media’s intrusion into writers’ personal lives. Additionally, DeLillo received the William Dean Howells Medal for Underworld, a historical novel spanning from the Cold War era to the emergence of the Internet.

He received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2010, the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2013, and the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2015, along with numerous other honors.

François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)

François-Marie Arouet – Voltaire – was born in Paris, France, and deserves an Author Shoutout. He was a versatile and renowned figure in literature. Voltaire excelled in various fields such as playwriting, poetry, essays, novels, history, and philosophy. He gained recognition for his sharp wit, outspoken criticism of the Catholic Church, unwavering support for religious and expressive freedoms, and strong belief in the separation of church and state.

Candide, his most long-lasting creation, advocated for a practical outlook on life, rejecting shallow and simplistic optimism. He passed away in Paris in 1778, at the age of 83.

Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot)

Mary Anne Evans, born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, deserves an Author Shoutout. Using the pseudonym George Eliot, she emerged as a prominent writer during the Victorian era. Her novels, including Silas Marner and Middlemarch, are renowned for their realistic portrayal and deep understanding of the Victorian society. George Eliot adopted a masculine pen name to ensure the serious consideration of her works, as women were often limited to writing mere lighthearted romances.

Speculation exists regarding her adoption of the name George Eliot, possibly as a means to conceal her enduring involvement with a married individual. Her demise occurred in 1880 in London, when she was 61 years old.

Mary Seacole

An Author Shoutout to Mary Seacole Mary Seacole, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Her memoir Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands was published in 1857. As a mixed-race woman, being the daughter of a Scottish soldier in the British Army and a free Jamaican woman, she faced challenges. However, she persevered and became a nurse, providing aid to cholera victims in Panama. Despite facing obstacles due to her darker skin, she eventually contributed to the nursing efforts during the Crimean War.

She also founded the British Hotel in Crimea (present-day Ukraine), which served Army officers and tourists, and gained a reputation as a resourceful female entrepreneur. Her story is captivating, diverse, and vibrant. She passed away in London in 1881, potentially due to a stroke, at the age of 75.

Marlon James

An Author Shoutout to Marlon James, a Jamaican author, who deserves recognition for his contributions. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he departed his homeland to seek safety from violence targeting the LGBTQ+ community and to overcome challenging economic conditions. Nonetheless, these experiences continued to shape his literary creations. Notably, his novel published in 2009, titled The Book of Night Women, gained attention for its depiction of a slave uprising on a Jamaican plantation during the early 19th century. Furthermore, his 2014 work, A Brief History of Seven Killings, delves into Jamaican history and political instability across multiple decades, earning him the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Moon Witch, Spider King are installments in his fantasy series, following the acclaimed Black Leopard, Red Wolf, recipient of both the American Book Award and the Locus Award for best Horror Novel. Additionally, he worked on an HBO television series called Get Millie Black.

Poul Anderson

Science fiction writer Poul Anderson, born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, deserves an Author Shoutout. He achieved remarkable productivity with over 100 books, predominantly novels. Anderson’s accomplishments include seven Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, four Prometheus Awards, and a prestigious appointment as SFWA Grand Master in 1997. His contributions to the genre were acknowledged further when he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000.

He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), a prominent re-enactment group focused on living history. The SCA boasts a membership of nearly 30,000 and attracts around 60,000 participants from across the globe. Unfortunately, he passed away at the age of 74 in 2001 due to cancer.

Charles M. Schulz

A Great Pumpkin Author Shoutout to cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, who hailed from Minneapolis, Minnesota. On October 2, 1950, Schulz introduced his cherished comic strip, Peanuts, which continued without interruption for nearly 50 years, aside from a brief hiatus in 1997 to commemorate his 75th birthday. This amounted to almost 18,000 strips in total. At its peak, Peanuts was published daily in 2,600 newspapers across 75 countries, generating over $1 billion in revenue.

Schulz created the entire strip without the assistance of a letterer or inker. He declared that Peanuts would endure beyond his lifetime. On February 12, 2000, at the age of 77, Schulz passed away. Coincidentally, the final original Peanuts comic was published the following day, Sunday, February 13.

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