Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Literature & Poetry

26

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Maryse Condé (née Boucolon)

Maryse Condé

Guadeloupe

1937 – 2024 (87 years old)

Grand dame of Caribbean and Francophone literature. Author of the epic historical masterpiece Segu and I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem. Winner of the 2018 New Academy Prize in Literature.

Paris, France

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Literature & Poetry

24

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Christopher McKenzie Priest

Christopher Priest

Great Britain

1943 – 2024 (80 years old)

Renowned British science fiction and speculative fiction novelist whose intricate explorations of memory, unreliable reality, and illusion yielded masterworks including Inverted World and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Prestige, adapted into Christopher Nolan's acclaimed film.

Isle of Bute, United Kingdom

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Literature & Poetry

24

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Navarre Scott Momaday

Tsoai-talee

United States

1934 – 2024 (89 years old)

Kiowa novelist, poet, and scholar whose 1968 masterpiece House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, igniting the Native American Renaissance and transforming American literary history.

Santa Fe, United States

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Literature & Poetry

27

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Terry Ballantine Bisson

Terry Bisson

United States

1942 – 2024 (81 years old)

American science fiction and fantasy author acclaimed for brilliant short stories, including the Hugo and Nebula-winning "Bears Discover Fire" and the satirical classic "They're Made out of Meat".

Berkeley, United States

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Literature & Poetry

25

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Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah

Benjamin Zephaniah

Great Britain

1958 – 2023 (65 years old)

Pioneering British Rastafarian dub poet, author, and activist whose rhythmic verse confronted racism, animal rights, and inequality, famous for rejecting an OBE in protest against the British Empire and portraying street preacher Jeremiah Jesus in Peaky Blinders.

Waltham Green, United Kingdom

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Literature & Poetry

25

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Dame Antonia Susan Byatt

Antonia Susan Drabble

Great Britain

1936 – 2023 (87 years old)

Acclaimed English novelist, poet, and literary critic who won the 1990 Booker Prize for Possession: A Romance, celebrated for intellectual depth, rich sensory prose, and mastery of myth, art history, and Victorian aesthetics.

London, United Kingdom

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Literature & Poetry

30

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Louise Elisabeth Glück

Louise Glück

United States

1943 – 2023 (80 years old)

American poet and essayist awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal," celebrated for collections like The Wild Iris and Faithful and Virtuous Night.

Cambridge, United States

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Literature & Poetry

25

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Hélène Zourabichvili

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse

France

1929 – 2023 (94 years old)

Distinguished French historian and Sovietologist who famously predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union in her 1978 book L'Empire éclaté, and served for 24 years as the first female Perpetual Secretary of the Académie française.

Paris, France

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Literature & Poetry

24

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Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Czech Republic

1929 – 2023 (94 years old)

Internationally celebrated Czech-French author whose philosophical masterworks, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, explored memory, totalitarianism, and human existence.

Brno, Czech Republic

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Literature & Poetry

27

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Adolfo Atilio Gilly Malvagni

Adolfo Gilly

Argentina

1928 – 2023 (94 years old)

Argentine-born Mexican historian, political essayist, and UNAM professor celebrated for writing The Interrupted Revolution while imprisoned in Lecumberri, the definitive socialist interpretation of the Mexican Revolution.

Mexico City, Mexico

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Literature & Poetry

33

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Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.

United States

1933 – 2023 (89 years old)

Iconic American novelist whose sparse, apocalyptic prose in masterpieces such as Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road earned him the Pulitzer Prize and a place among the greatest writers of modern literature.

Santa Fe, United States

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Literature & Poetry

24

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Ama Ata Aidoo

Christina Ama Aidoo

Ghana

1942 – 2023 (81 years old)

Celebrated Ghanaian novelist, playwright, poet, and feminist minister who championed African women's agency, anti-colonialism, and pan-Africanism in landmark literary works including Changes and Anowa.

Accra, Ghana

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Literature & Poetry

26

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Martin Louis Amis

Martin Amis

Great Britain

1949 – 2023 (73 years old)

Preeminent British novelist, essayist, and satirist whose dazzling prose style, linguistic virtuosity, and scathing social commentary defined late-20th-century British fiction in masterpieces like Money, London Fields, and The Zone of Interest.

Lake Worth Beach, United States

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Literature & Poetry

1

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Salma Khadra Jayyusi

سلمى الخضراء الجيوسي

Palestine

16 April 1926 – 20 April 2023 (97 years old)

Visionary Palestinian literary historian and anthologist who founded PROTA to translate major Arabic literary masterworks into English.

Amman, Jordan

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Literature & Poetry

29

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Dubravka Ugrešić

Dubravka Ugrešić

Croatia

1949 – 2023 (73 years old)

Post-Yugoslav Croatian-Dutch novelist and essayist celebrated for fierce, ironical explorations of exile, nationalism, post-communist identity, and memory in works like The Ministry of Pain and The Museum of Unconditional Surrender.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Literature & Poetry

24

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Kenzaburō Ōe

大江 健三郎

Japan

1935 – 2023 (88 years old)

Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author whose visionary works, including A Personal Matter and Hiroshima Notes, explored family, disability, nuclear disarmament, and post-war Japanese moral identity.

Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan

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Literature & Poetry

3

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Moncef Ghachem

المنصف غشام

Tunisia

1946 – 2023 (76 years old)

Major Tunisian Francophone poet known as the 'Poet of the Sea', whose evocative collections such as Cap Africa celebrated the fishermen, winds, and ancient maritime traditions of Mahdia.

Mahdia, Tunisia

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Literature & Poetry

25

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Charles Simic

Dušan Simić

Serbia

1938 – 2023 (84 years old)

Serbian-born American poet, translator, and essayist who won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The World Doesn't End and served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Dover, United States

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