Heavenly birthday wishes Janet McDonald! Born August 10, 1953, Janet McDonald was an African American author of young adult novels as well as the author of Project Girl, a memoir about her early life in Brooklyn’s Farragut Houses and struggle to achieve an Ivy League education. She died in 2007. I read Project Girl many years ago. It is a very real, very engaging, and very well written story!
Happy birthday Derrick Barnes! Born August 9, Derrick Barnes is an award-winning African American children’s and young adult’s author. Derrick Barnes is a National Book Award Finalist for his 2022 graphic novel Victory. Stand!-Raising My Fist For Justice, which also won the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award, and a Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers.
In 2020, he became the only author to win the Kirkus Prize twice for his twelfth release, the New York Times bestseller, I Am Every Good Thing. The title also won a Charlotte Huck Award (NCTE), and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor. Visit his website for more of his notable books.
Heavenly belated birthday wishes James H. Cone! Born August 6, 1938, James Hal Cone was an African American Methodist minister and theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. He died in 2018. He authored these works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Robert Hayden! Born August 4, 1913 in Detroit, Robert Hayden was an African American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as U.S. Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold the office. He died in 1980. He authored a few works. The collected poems was published posthumously.
Belated happy birthday Sapphire! Born August 4, Ramona Lofton better known by her pen name Sapphire, is an African American author and performance poet. She is well known for her novel, Push. She has authored additional novels and collections of poetry.
Belated happy birthday S. A. Cosby! Born August 4, Shawn Andre Cosby is an African American author of Southern noir crime fiction. He resides in Gloucester, Virginia on the York River. Cosby has published five crime novels: My Darkest Prayer, Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears, All the Sinners Bleed, and King of Ashes.
Happy birthday 44th President Barack Obama! Born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, and raised with the help of his grandparents. Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and held the office for two terms. A prolific reader, he authored the following books:
Here is Barack Obama’s 2026 Summer Reading List:
Belated happy birthday Ross Gay! Born August 1, Ross Gay is an African American poet, essayist, and professor of English at Indiana University who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Ross Gay is interested in joy. He wants to understand joy. He is curious about joy. He studies joy. Here are some of his notable works:
Read some of Ross Gay’s poems here:
Heavenly happy birthday James Baldwin! Born August 2, 1924, James Arthur Baldwin was an African American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. He died in 1987. His authored other notable works:
Read some of his poetry here:
Happy birthday Tomi Adeyemi! Born August 1, Tomi Adeyemi was name one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. Tomi Adeyemi is a Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning writer, speaker, and model based in New York, New York. She is best known for her Children of Blood and Bone, book 1 in an Orisha trilogy.
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