Born in Wellington in 1888, Katherine Mansfield was a writer and poet and an exponent of the modernist movement of the early 20th Century. Raised in a well-to-do family, she spent her childhood in New Zealand before moving to England when she was fifteen. Mansfield began writing at an early age and first published short fiction for her high school magazine in ...
A key figure in Chicago’s African American movement, Margaret Walker was born in Alabama in 1915. Her father was a minister who made sure that his daughter learned about philosophy and ingrained in her a love of poetry from a very early age. They moved to New Orleans where Walker went to school before heading for the city lights of Chicago. She ...
Marcus Garvey was an accomplished speaker, poet and entrepreneur who was born in Jamaica in 1887. He was the last born of eleven children and from a young age became acquainted with the poor employment conditions that the working class of Jamaica had to endure, particularly when he moved to Kingston at 14 years of age. Garvey’s first experience of racism was ...
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian born writer who, at 18 years of age, fled the turmoil of revolution in his country in 1917, finding a safe haven at first in England, the United States. France and finally Switzerland. He wrote poetry, novels and non-fiction and is probably best known for his most controversial book, published in 1958. Lolita was the story of ...
One of the best-known and most popular Canadian poet, novelist and journalists, Alden Nowlan would overcome great adversity to garner acclaim for his work, such as the Governor General’s Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was born January 25th 1933 in Nova Scotia to a dirt-poor family. Gordon Freeman Nowlan (Alden’s father) was a labourer. His mother was only fifteen years old when ...
