English Department

at the University of Michigan-Flint

Happy Birthday, Frederick Dannay! (October 20, 1905)

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In 1928 two cousins, Frederick Dannay (“Danny”) and Manfred B. Lee, created Ellery Queen for a contest sponsored by McClure’s magazine and Stokes publishing house.  The prize for creating the best new detective novel was $7500.  The cousins won the contest, but McClure’s went bankrupt shortly afterwards, so they never collected their prize.  Between 1929

Happy Birthday, Walter Lord! (October 8, 1917)

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Walter Lord is best known as author of A Night to Remember (1955), a narrative non-fiction book on the sinking of the Titanic. Lord interviewed more survivors than any other Titanic historian and inspired a generation of Titanic scholars. When the film A Night to Remember was released in 1958, it reminded the world of

Happy Birthday, Sherman Alexie! (October 7, 1966)

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Sherman Alexie has been called a new, inventive voice in Native American literatures. But don’t call him a Native American, a term that he says is a product of “liberal white guilt.” Alexie is Spokane and Coeur d’Alene Indian, although he is careful to warn against reading his work as representative of other Indians’ experiences.