His full name is Edward Irving Wortis (A.K.A Avi) was born December 23, 1937 (age is 77 years old almost 78) in New York but was raised in Brooklyn, along with his twin sister. His father was a doctor and later on his mother became a social worker. Every Friday he and his sister were taken to the library. Every birthday he would always receive a book. Early on he had his own collection of books. He came from a family of writers, artists, and musicians. Today they all have that, plus filmmakers, actors, and theater and TV directors. Two of his sons were in the rock music world and the third is a journalist. Growing up in Brooklyn he went to a public school. His older brother was always considered a genius. When he was in high school he wanted
to become a designer of airplanes. But when he flunked he went to a small private school that provided him with an English teacher that insisted him to get help with his writing. He is now an award-winning author and he enjoys visiting schools. He identifies children who are lonely, frustrated, and isolated.
Weird Al” Yankovic was born in Downey, California under the name of Alfred Matthew Yankovic. His first name, Alfred, is where he got the Al in “Weird Al” Yankovic. The genres he does are Comedy, Parody, and Polka. His occupations are Singer, Songwriter, Parodist, Record Producer, Satirist, Actor, Music Video Director, Film Producer, and Author. Yankovic also does vocals, plays the accordion, keyboards, and theremin, and he’s been active since 1976 and is still going.
The author Ralph Ellison is a renowned writer and scholar with significant nonfiction stories credited to his name. He was born in Oklahoma City about the year 1913. His family had a small business wherein his father worked as a foreman but soon died when he was only three years old. After several years, he later found out that his father wished that he would someday become a poet after the great American essayist popularly known as Ralph Waldo Emerson who became his namesake. His mother was Ida Millsap Ellison who was involved as a political activist campaigning for the Socialist Party. Moreover, she was arrested several times in violation of the segregation orders.
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
Albert Henry Desalvo was born on September 3, 1931 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to Frank Desalvo and Charlotte. Desalvo was the third of six children. Desalvo father was an aggressive, violent, alcoholic fisherman from Newfoundland, Canada. Desalvo father would brutally beat up his wife and children with fists, belts, and pipes. When Charlotte was out of the house, Desalvo father brought prostitutes home and had sexual intercourse with them in front of the children. He was arrested repeatedly for refusing to support his wife and children. At a young age, Desalvo father taught Albert how to shoplift and encouraged him to steal.
Howard Robert Hughes was born in Huston, Texas in 1905(Moore 92). His father, Robert Hughes, became well known for building oil drilling tools for major corporations such as Standard oil (Nicholas 48). His mother Jane was a frail woman who had a serious case of obsessive compulsive disorder towards hygiene and lived and made her son live in fear of germs for his whole life (Simikin 10). At the age of 52, Robert Hughes died of stomach cancer and left his company to his son Howard (Nicholas 48). Having no interest in the oil machinery business, Howard left the company to his cousins and left Texas.
Robert Olden Butler was born in 1944 and grew up in the small steel mill town of Granite City, Illinois. (Butler 526) He was the only child father who was a retired actor and former chairperson of the theater department at St. Louis University, and a mother who was a retired executive secretary? (Layman 4) In a 1993 interview, Butler said "It was second nature for us to talk late into the night about books, movies, and theater." (Stowers 202) After completing grade school, Butler attended Granite City High School where he became class president and co-valedictorian in 1963. Butler attended Northwestern University and graduated suma cum loude in 1967. Once completing graduate school with an MFA in play righting Butler suspected he would be drafted into the military.
He was raised on High Holborn Street in Central Kingston, remaining there until 1955 when he moved to the Waterhouse district. (1) His career took off very slowly, as it did not have a title, never mind an available position, at that time. He began working as a radio technician, or repairman, and by the late 1950’s, had already started experimenting with sound system amplifiers, manipulating the available sounds to ones that sounded native of outer space.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born to Louis and Naomi Ginsberg in Newark, New Jersey. The Ginsbergs were as small Jewish family. Ginsberg had one brother, Eugene, who was five years older. Ginsberg was a very involved student, participating in things like debate club among others things. He started his studies at Columbia University in 1943. At this time, Ginsberg was experimenting with
Avi was born in 1973 on December 23. He has a twin sister who was born 5 minutes after him, her name was Emily. She called him Avi and for some reason, it stuck with him and to this day people refer to him as Avi. Growing up in Brooklyn, he went to a public school. He was in the same class as his sister until eighth grade. He came from a family of writers, artists, and musicians. "Today we have all that, plus filmmakers, actors, and theater, and Tv directors". (http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/avi) Avi's real name was Edward Irving Wortis according to wikipedia.org (as of September 11, 2015). Avi wanted to be a designer of airlines, but flunked science in high school, so he got help on his English, and it led him
Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783 in New York City as the youngest of 11 children of a wealthy family. He was educated to become a lawyer, although his real interest was to be a writer. His career as a writer started writing essays under the pseudonym “Jonathan Oldstyle.” He also served as a military aide in the U.S. Army. One major experience in his life that has influenced his writing was a woman with whom he was engaged to be married, Matilda Hoffman, died at the age of seventeen of pneumonia. Washington Irving was one of the best authors due to his fascinating short stories, relevant themes, and impact on society.
Aldous Leonard Huxley was born, in the English countryside, on July 26, 1894 to Leonard and Julia Huxley. He was their third child. His siblings were Julian, Trevenen, and Margaret. His father was the son of T. H. Huxley, a brilliant scientist, and his mother, Julia, was the great-niece of Matthew Arnold, a poet-philosopher. He was unusual and bright but not immediately academically distinguished (Hara 4). His mother had started a school for girls and that is where Huxley first started to bloom. In 1908 his mother died of cancer and she told Huxley, “Don’t be too critical of people and love much” (Garrett 87). His academic career was stopped in 1911 when he got Keratitis punctata (an eye ailment). It left him blinded but he still stayed in school. He had two tutors, his homework and braille. In 1913, he stayed with his brother while his vision improved. He started to travel more when his father remarried (Garrett 87).
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City Oklahoma. Growing up Ellison loved to read and write due to the perhaps DNA inheritance of his father who liked to read so much he couldn’t wait to read his next saga. Ellison’s mother had a passion for bringing home books and magazines from houses she cleaned, at her one of many jobs she had to make end meet as single mother/widowed. Soon after his father died from a work related accident. Ellison was only three years old and his mother was forced to pick up extra jobs to take care of Ralph and his brother so they can make ends meet. In 1933 he left Oklahoma to study music at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He did not graduate, due to tuition fees being high. From there he moved to New York in 1936, where he was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance culture.
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian novelist, essayist, dramatist, and journalist and a Nobel laureate. He was born in Algeria to a French father and Spanish mother. After his father was killed in WWI, he was raised in poverty by his grandmother and mother. He was forced to end his studies and limit his life in theatre as a playwright, director, and actor due to tuberculosis. He then turned his interest to politics and, after briefly being a member of the Communist party, he began a career in journalism in 1930. His articles reflected the suffering of the Arabs in Algeria. This led him to his dismissal of his newspaper job. Later, he worked in Paris for a newspaper and soon he became involved in Resistance movements against the Germans. He started writing an underground newspaper. Camus wrote many novels and his writings, illustrated his view of the absurdity of human existence: Humans are not absurd, and the world is not absurd, but for humans to be in the world is absurd. In his opinion, humans cannot feel at home in the world because they yearn for order, clarity, meaning, and eternal life, while the world is chaotic, obscure, and indifferent and offers only suffering and death. Thus human beings are alienated from the world. Integrity and dignity require them to face and accept the human condition as it is and to find purely human solutions to their plight. He used a simple and clear but elegant form of writing to convey his ideas about morality, justice and love. In 1957, Camus received the Nobel price for literature. He was deeply troubled by the Algerian War of Independence and he immersed himself in the theatre and working on an autobiographical novel. He died in an automobile accident just before being named director of the national theater.
Albert Camus was born on November 7th, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria, a town fifteen and a half miles south of Annaba, the second child of Lucien Auguste and Catherine Helene Sintes. They were a French family settling in French Algeria, referred to as Pied Noir. His father worked as a foreman at a vineyard earning a minimal salary and also served in the military. Catherine was a Spanish woman. She was also partially deaf because of a stroke that damaged her speech for good. Albert Camus only had one brother, Lucien, named after their father. Lucien was three years older than his younger brother and was born three months after the marriage of his mother and father.
In 1922, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana to Edith Vonnegut and Kurt Vonnegut Sr. At the age of 18 he graduated from Shortridge High School and pursued a degree in chemistry at Cornell University. (Bonner, par. 1) However, he left college in 1943 to serve his country in World War II. Upon return, Vonnegut continued his studies at the University of Chicago in the field of anthropology. (Encarta, par. 4) In 1950 He left his job and started writing full-time. Vonnegut's other works include ...