Showing posts with label Novelist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Novelist. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 May 2016

Billy Martin/ Poppy Z. Brite (American author)

* Billy Martin, known professionally as Poppy Z. Brite, initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s by publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections, including Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (1993), and the controversial serial killer novel Exquisite Corpse (1996). His later work moved into the related genre of dark comedy, with many stories set in the New Orleans restaurant world. Martin's novels are typically standalone books but may feature recurring characters from previous novels and short stories. Much of his work features openly bisexual and gay characters. Martin himself is a a trans man who identifies as gay.
NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: Melissa Ann Brite, 25 May 1967, 16:55 (4:55pm) CDT (+5), New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (29n57, 90w04). ASC: 27 Libra. RR: B (from biography). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes from Resurrection and Reclamation by Elrod Stanton (iUniverse, 2005), p. 469: "Poppy Z. Brite Born: May 25, 1967 at 4:55pm, New Orleans, L.A."


Copyright Sy Scholfield. All rights reserved in all media. Please feel free to share these data and charts with appropriate acknowledgment.



Thursday, 11 February 2016

Natalie Clifford Barney, 1876–1972 (American playwright, poet and novelist)

* Natalie Clifford Barney lived as an expatriate in Paris. Her salon was held at her home at 20 rue Jacob in Paris' Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" (L'Académie des Femmes) in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.

She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young males). In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller Sapphic Idyll to The Well of Loneliness, the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.


NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: 31 October 1876, 09:00 (9 AM), Dayton, Ohio, USA (39n45, 84w11). ASC: 7 Sagittarius. RR: B (from biography). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes from George Wickes' biography, The Amazon of Letters: The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney (Putnam, 1976), p. 100.


Copyright Sy Scholfield. All rights reserved in all media.



Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Larry L. King, 1929–2012 (American playwright, journalist, and novelist)

* Larry L. King is best remembered for his 1978 Tony Award-nominated play The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which became a long-running production on Broadway and was later turned into a feature film starring Burt Reynolds, Charles Durning and Dolly Parton.

In 1974, he wrote an article about the Chicken Ranch brothel in La Grange, Texas; after the article was published in Playboy, King and fellow Texan Peter Masterson developed it into the book of the Broadway musical.

King received an Emmy Award in 1982 for the CBS documentary The Best Little Statehouse in Texas.

King died on 20 December 2012, at a retirement home in Washington, D. C., survived by his third wife, five children, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.


NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: Lawrence Leo King, 1 January 1929, 23:45 (11:45pm) CST (+6), Putnam, Callahan, Texas, USA (32n22, 99w11). ASC: 28 Virgo. RR: AA (from birth record). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes birth certificate.


Copyright Sy Scholfield. All rights reserved in all media.



Saturday, 26 December 2015

Tomson Highway (Canadian and Cree playwright, novelist, and children's author)

* Tomson Highway is best known for his plays "The Rez Sisters" and "Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing," both of which won him the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.

Highway has also published a novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), which is based on the events that led to his brother René Highway’s death of AIDS. He also has the distinction of being the librettist of the first Cree language opera, The Journey or Pimooteewin.

He was artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto from 1986 to 1992, as well as De-ba-jeh-mu-jig theatre group in Wikwemikong.

He currently divides his time between residences in Noelville, Ontario and in France with Raymond Lalonde, his partner of 31 years.


NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: Tomson Highway, 6 December 1951, 04:00 (4 AM) CST (+6), Brochet, Manitoba, Canada (57n53, 101w40) ASC: 21 Libra. RR: A (from memory). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes him in an interview: "my mother went into labour and they had to pitch a tent in the snow and I was born that night at four o'clock in the morning." ("Tomson Highway Has A Surprisingly Positive Take On Residential Schools" by Joshua Ostroff, Huffington Post, 15 December 2015 [online]).


Copyright Sy Scholfield. All rights reserved in all media.



Monday, 30 November 2015

Blaise Cendrars, 1887–1961 (Swiss-French novelist and poet)

* Blaise Cendrars was a writer of considerable influence in the European modernist movement. He was the first modernist poet, not only in terms of expressing the fundamental values of Modernism but also in terms of creating its first solid poetical synthesis. In 1912, in New York, he wrote his long poem, "Les Pâques à New York" (Easter in New York), his first important contribution to modern literature. He signed it for the first time with the name 'Blaise Cendrars.'

Back in Paris, Cendrars became an important part of the artistic community in Montparnasse; his writings were considered a literary epic of the modern adventurer. He was a friend of the American writer Henry Miller, and, in 1918, his friend Amedeo Modigliani painted his portrait. He died on 21 January 1961.


NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: Frédéric-Louis Sauser, 1 September 1887, 19:45 (7:45pm)(-0:29:44), La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Switzerland (47n06, 6e50). ASC: 12 Aries. RR: AA (quoted birth certificate). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield cites birth record quoted in Blaise Cendrars: Homme libre, poète au coeur du monde by Jean Bühler (Éditions du Panorama, Fischbacher, 1960), p. 9: "Blaise Cendrars est né le 1er septembre 1887, à 19 heures 45, à La Chaux-de-Fonds. Son père Georges Frédéric Sauser le déclara à l'état-civil sous les prénoms de Frédéric Louis. "


Copyright Sy Scholfield. All rights reserved in all media.