December 29 is the 363rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; two days remain until the end of the year.
Judith Blume is an American writer of children's, young adult, and adult fiction. Blume began writing in 1959 and has published more than 26 novels. Among her best-known works are Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (1970), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Deenie (1973), and Blubber (1974). Blume's books have significantly contributed to children's and young adult literature. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was a British and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She then became the world's highest paid movie star in the 1960s, remaining a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her seventh on its greatest female screen legends list.
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. She is best known for writing I Capture the Castle (1948) and the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include Dear Octopus (1938) and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 film. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003).
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1951.
Margaret Forster was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic, best known for the 1965 novel Georgy Girl, made into a successful film of the same name, which inspired a hit song by The Seekers. Other successes were a 2003 novel, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, biographies of Daphne du Maurier and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her memoirs Hidden Lives and Precious Lives.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive. Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood. In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.
Anita Diamant is an American author of fiction and non-fiction books. She has published five novels, the most recent of which is The Boston Girl, a New York Times best seller. She is best known for her 1997 novel The Red Tent, which eventually became a best seller and book club favorite. She has also written six guides to contemporary Jewish practice, including The New Jewish Wedding,Living a Jewish Life, and The New Jewish Baby Book, as well as a collection of personal essays, Pitching My Tent.
Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal is an American screenwriter and director. She is the mother of actors Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Elizabeth Jane Howard, was an English novelist. She wrote 12 novels including the best-selling series TheCazalet Chronicle.
Antonya Nelson is an American author and teacher of creative writing who writes primarily short stories.
Elizabeth Shippen Green was an American illustrator. She illustrated children's books and worked for publications such as The Ladies' Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post and Harper's Magazine.
Jacqueline Carey is an American novelist and short story writer. Carey grew up in Connecticut and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1977. She lived in New York City for many years but published her first story in The New Yorker in 1986 after a move to Montana. In 2000, she wrote a mystery column for Salon.com. She now lives in New Jersey, with her husband, writer Ian Frazier.
Barbara Schenck under the pseudonym Anne McAllister is an American best-selling writer of over 55 romance novels since 1985.
Alix Kates Shulman is an American writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, and a prominent early radical activist of second-wave feminism. She is best-known for her bestselling debut adult novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, hailed by the Oxford Companion to Women's Writing as "the first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation Movement."
Elizabeth Garver Jordan was an American journalist, author, editor, and suffragist, now remembered primarily for having edited the first two novels of Sinclair Lewis, and for her relationship with Henry James, especially for recruiting him to participate in the round-robin novel The Whole Family. She was editor of Harper's Bazaar from 1900 to 1913.
Lois Wyse was an American advertising executive, author and columnist. At the time of her death, Wyse was credited with writing more than 60 books on diverse topics such as business, love and family.
Becca Fitzpatrick is an American author, best known for having written the New York Times bestseller Hush, Hush, a young adult novel published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. She wrote three sequels to Hush, Hush, along with two separate novels. Fitzpatrick also contributed to the short story collection Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love.
Patricia Valeria Bannister was a writer of historical romance fiction from 1978 until 2002. She wrote under the names Patricia Veryan and Gwyneth Moore.
Elizabeth Byrd was an American author. Her main body of work is historical fiction, and her most successful novel is Immortal Queen, a historical romance about Mary, Queen of Scots. Nine of her thirteen novels were published while she was living in Scotland.
