Author Biographies
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Hausman, Gerald | |||
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Gerald hasuman, born in 1945 in Baltimore, Maryland, is a storyteller, teacher, editor. He has authored retellings of many Native American stories and other traditional ethnic stories as well as books on animal mythology. Hausman and his wife founded a school for creative writing in Jamaica. | |||
Herzog, George | |||
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George Herzog was born in 1901 in Budapest, Hungary. He became an American ethnomusicologist, teaching that cultural context should be included in the study of music. Herzog studied West African music during an anthropolgy expedition to Liberia from 1931-1932. He died in 1983. | |||
Hughes, Langston | |||
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Due to his parents’ divorce, young james Langston Hughes was raised
by his grandmother. He was born in 1902 in Missouri and moved to
Illinois at age thirteen to live with his mother and her husband.
There he began writing poetry. He spent a year in Mexico visiting
his father and a year at Columbia University. Hughes later finished
his degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1924 Hughes
moved to Washington, D.C. He published his first book of poems,
The Weary Blues, in 1926.
His first novel, Nor Without
Laughter, published in 1930, won the Harmon Gold Medal for
Literature. Known for his insightful and colorful portrayals of
black life in America in the 1 920s through I 960s, Hughes wrote
novels, short stories and plays in addition to his poetry Unlike
other writers of his time, Hughes refused to differentiate between
his personal experience and the communal experience of black
America. He wanted to tell stories of his people in ways that
reflected their actual culture—including the suffering. the love of
music and laughter, and the rich language, Hughes died of
complications of prostate cancer in 1967, after which his home in
Harlem was given landmark status. | |||
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Jansson, Tove | |||
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Born in 1914 in Helsinki, Finland, Tove Jansson, the daughter of a sculptor and a designer, studied painting in Finland, Sweden, and France. In addition to her success as an artist, jansson wrote and illustrated many children's books as well as comic strips, plays, and books for adults. Known worldwide as the creator of the Moomin books, a series that echoes Scandinavian folklore, Jansson was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She died in 2001. | |||
Jarrell, Randall | |||
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Randall Jarrell was born in 1914 in Nashville, Tennessee. He had a reputation for being an exacting literary critic and an intense lover of literature. He was also admired as a poet and won the National Book Award in 1961 for The Woman at the Washington Zoo, one of his six books of poetry. In addition to his poetry and criticism, Jarrell wrote a novel and children's books, edited anthologies, and translated a number of works, including stories by the Grimm brothers. He died in 1965. | |||
Jiménez, Francisco | |||
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Born in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, in 1943, Francisco Jiménez has won many awards for The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child from which "Learning the Game" appears. Jiménez was choosen as the 2002 U.S. Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Supoprt of Education (CASE) and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for his work as a professor and program director at Santa Clara University. | |||
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Kennedy, John F. | |||
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The youngest man elected to be President of the United States, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was also the youngest to die in office. Born in
Massachusetts in 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 and
entered the Navy where he was a WWII hero during an attack on his
PT boat. After the war, he became a Democratic congressman near
Boston, and in 1953 Kennedy advanced to the Senate. In 1955, while
recovering from a back injury, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in history Seventy million Americans
watched the Great Debates between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in
1960. Kennedy won the presidential race by a narrow margin. In his
inaugural address Kennedy famously stated, "Ask not what your
country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." In
response to urgent demands from many groups, Kennedy made moves to
support the cause of civil rights during the early 60s. In November
of 1963, after hardly 1,000 days in office, John F. Kennedy was
killed by an assassin’s bullet while riding in a motorcade in
Texas. | |||
Kennedy, Richard | |||
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Born in 1932 in Jefferson City, Missouri, Richard kennedy has worked a number of jobs, including archivist, cab driver, deckhand, fireman, and teacher. he has earned critical acclaim for his distinct contribution to American chldren's literature. Two of his most notable works are Amy's Eyes, a five hundred-page juvenile novel, and Richard Kennedy: Collected Stories. | |||
King, Martin Luther | |||
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Born in Atlanta in 1929, Martin Luther King attended segregated
schools in Georgia, graduating high school at age fifteen. His
grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors at the
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. After earning his BA from
Morehouse College in 1948, King spent three years studying at the
Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. At Crozer King won a
fellowship and enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University
where he met and married Coretta Scott and graduated in 1955.
Always a strong worker for civil rights, in 1955 King accepted
leadership of the first black nonviolent demonstration in the
U.S.—a bus boycott lasting 382 days. King faced jail, bombing, and
abuse as a leader of the boycott, but emerged as an irreplaceable
leader in the movement. In 1957 King was elected president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to
provide leadership for the burgeoning civil rights movement. King’s
Letter from a Birmingham
Jail was a manifesto of the black revolution, and over
250,000 people heard his "I Have a Dream" speech during the march
for civil rights in Washington, D.C. At age 35 King became the
youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, turning over the
$50,000 in prize money to further civil rights work. In April of
1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated while standing on a hotel
balcony in Memphis. | |||