Perhaps best known for his novels Crash and The Empire of the Sun, James Graham Ballard was born in Shanghai.
After the attack on Pearl Harbour he was forced to intern at a Japanese prison camp with his parents and sister. It was an experience that became the basis for the Empire of the Sun, which was later made into a movie by Steven Spielberg.
After returning to England from China, he studied medicine and his ambition was to be a psychiatrist. However, after his short story The Violet Noon won a competition he realised that writing was his true vocation.
In 1960 he published his first novel The Wind From Nowhere (after publishing seven science fiction short stories and working at the scientific journal Chemistry and Industry in the capacity of an assistant editor).
What followed were several novels and short story collections; many of his novels were adapted into films and TV series, including the controversial 1996 film Crash.
A movie producer, journalist, TV host and writer, Dominick John Dunne was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He studied at Williams College, and after serving in the Second World War he moved to New York City. A stint in Hollywood followed, where he rose to fame as a film produces.
It was in the comparative rural setting of Oregon, however, that he wrote his first novel The Winners in 1982. That same year his daughter, Dominique Dunne, was murdered and after this Dunne wrote an article entitled Justice A father's account of the trial of his daughter's killer in Vanity Fair magazine. Thereafter he wrote for the magazine regularly. In between he hosted the famous TV show Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege and Justice. His popular novels included People Like Us, An Inconvenient Woman, The Way We Lived Then. His last novel Too Much money was published in 2009.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Francis McCourt's family lived in dire poverty in the United States, and unlike most immigrants of America who found opportunities in the land of the free, they returned to their native Ireland.
The first of five children, McCourt nearly died of typhoid fever at the age 10; his father was an alcoholic and therefore unable to support his family, which is why young McCourt held a variety of odd jobs in order to help his mother raise the family.
At age 19 McCourt returned to the US where he joined the army and served in Germany during the Korean War. After returning to the US he attended college and university in New York, and eventually taught English at Stuyvesant High School in the city.
In 1996 McCourt's first book Angela's Ashes was published. It brought to life his childhood in Ireland; the book was later adapted for the silver screen and both the book and movie were highly acclaimed — the book won the Pulitzer Prize. Its sequel, 'Tis, was published three years later and was based on McCourt's life in the United States.
Born in Hampstead, London, Sir John Clifford Mortimer was a barrister, screenwriter and an author. He read law at Brasenose College, Oxford, but was expelled after his letters to an older student were discovered. After this he wrote scripts for documentaries and in 1955 began working at BBC Radio, his radio play A Voyage Round My Father is still remembered by many.
He work as a barrister saw him represent various controversial cases of which the Linda Lovelace-Deep Throat case is probably the most famous. Still, despite a successful career in law, it was clear that writing was his true love. He once said, 'If you write a bad book, no one goes to prison which is rather a relief.'
Despite writing numerous books and screenplays, however, Mortimer will mainly be remembered for creating Horace Rumpole, a lawyer who was the primary character in the BBC series Rumpole of the Bailey. The character was later featured into novels and a radio show.
The undisputed king of pop wrote his autobiography, Moonwalk, which was published in 1988 — just a year after his album Bad was released and changed the world as we knew it.
The book was said to be edited by Jackie Kennedy Onassis. After his untimely death this year, the book was republished with a foreword by Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown Records and a close friend of Michael Jackson.
Perhaps best known for co-writing The Silver Palate cookbook series with Julee Rosso, Sheila Lukins was one America's foremost cooks and food writers. She became a renowned foodie after she set up a gourmet food shop in New York City with Rosso called The Silver Palate. What followed was an entire series of cookbooks, which included The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, The New Basics Cookbook and All Around the World Cookbook and sold more then seven million copies.
Through her books she introduced countless Americans to the joys of French, Southern and Eastern European cuisine, very much like Julia Child. Interestingly enough, Lukins was also Julia Child's successor as the food editor of the food magazine Parade.
John Updike's death this year is perhaps the biggest loss to the literary world this year. A novelist, poet, art and literary critic, Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. Inspired by his mother's writing, he decided to become a writer when he was a child.
He studied at Harvard on a full scholarship and after graduating began to write for the New Yorker. In 1959, his first short story collection, The Same Door was published. It turned out to be the first of 14 short story collections that he would eventually write in his lifetime. In 1960 Rabbit, Run was published and Updike's success as a writer was sealed as its sequels followed. He is perhaps best known for this Rabbit series, which comprises four novels and a novella, two of which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Updike was also a dedicated poet; he published at least eight volumes of poetry the last of which, Endpoint, was published after his death in 2009. His other novels include Marry Me, In The Beauty of the Lilies, Villages and Terrorist. His work is said to have influences the likes of George Saunders, Ian McEwan, and Martin Amis among countless others. He once said that his style of writing was aimed 'to give the mundane its beautiful due.'
A writer and confirmed feminist, Marilyn French was born in Brooklyn, New York to Polish parents. She attended Hofstra University in Long Island where she earned a master's degree in English; later, she earned a PhD from Harvard, after which she taught at her alma mater, Hoftstra University.
She published her first book, The Book as World James Joyce's Ulysses, in 1976 which was a thesis on James Joyce. But it was The Women's Room which French published in 1977 that propelled her into the literary limelight.
The novel was acclaimed internationally and published all over the world in more than 20 different languages. The novel delved into the life of astute feminist Mira Ward and her friends who realise that it really is a man's world. The book was made into a movie three years later in 1980, the same year that she published her second novel The Bleeding Heart.
French's other acclaimed works include The War Against Women (1992), From Eve to Dawn A History of Women in Three Volumes (2002), and her last book, In the Name of Friendship (2006).
