Today is August 27th, which means that's the Christian feast of Saint Monica in some countries, including mine, Spain (personally, I am not religious but I've celebrated my name day as much as my birthday since I was born) and that's why I've decided to dedicate this day to some authors called Monica and make a full blog post about them, where you'll find a short biography of each one, including some of their works too.
Looking for authors called like me I've found out that there are not many, just as there are not many fictional characters called Monica neither, and that hurts a bit, honestly, but I've found five authors who have published many books, some of them are quite popular and since I haven't read any I want to add them to my TBR. So here are five authors called Monica!
Monica Dickens
Monica Dickens, born in 1915, was brought up in London. Her mother's German origins and her Catholicism gave her the detached eye of an outsider; at St Paul's Girls' School she was under occupied and rebellious. After drama school she was a debutante before working as a cook. One Pair of Hands (1937), her first book, described life in the kitchens of Kensington. It was the first of a group of semi autobiographies of which Mariana (1940), technically a novel, was one. 'My aim is to entertain rather than instruct,' she wrote. 'I want readers to recognise life in my books.' In 1951 Monica Dickens married a US naval officer, Roy Stratton, moved to America and adopted two daughters. An extremely popular writer, she involved herself in, and wrote about, good causes such as the Samaritans. After her husband died she lived in a cottage in rural Berkshire, dying there in 1992. She was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens.
Monica Brown
Monica Brown, Ph.D. is the author of awardwinning bilingual books for children, including My Name Is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz/Me llamo Celia: La vida de Celia Cruz (Luna Rising), a recipient of the Américas Award for Children's Literature and a Pura Belpré Honor. Her second picture book, My Name Is Gabriela: The Life of Gabriela Mistral/Me llamo Gabriela: La vida de Gabriela Mistral (Luna Rising) shares the story of the first Latina to win a Nobel Prize.
Monica's books are inspired by her Peruvian-American heritage and desire to share Latino/a stories with children. "I write from a place of deep passion, joy, and commitment to producing the highest possible quality of literature for children. In my biographies, the lives of my subjects are so interesting and transformational that I am simply giving them voice for a young audience. I don't think it is ever too early to introduce children to the concepts of magical realism, social justice, and dreaming big!"
Monica Brown is a Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, specializing in U.S. Latino Literature and Multicultural Literature. She also writes and publishes scholarly work with a Latino/a focus, including Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizenship in Puerto Rican and Chicano and Chicana Literature; and numerous scholarly articles and chapters on Latino/a literature and cultural studies. She is a recipient of the prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship on Chicano Cultural Literacies from the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Monica Hesse
Monica Hesse is the national bestselling author of the true crime love story American Fire and the Edgar Award-winning young adult historical mystery novel Girl in the Blue Coat, which has been translated into a dozen languages and was shortlisted for the American Booksellers Association's Indies Choice Award. Her latest book is They Went Left.
Monica is a columnist for the Washington Post, where she focuses on gender and its impact on society. Prior to that, she was a feature writer who covered royal weddings, dog shows, political campaigns, Academy Awards ceremonies, White House state dinners, and some events that felt like a mixture of all of the above. She has talked about these stories, and other things, on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, FOX and NPR, and she has been a winner of the Society for Feature Journalism's Narrative Storytelling award, and a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. Monica lives in Maryland. with her husband and a brainiac dog.
Monica Furlong
Monica Furlong was a British author, journalist, and activist. She was born at Kenton near Harrow, north-west of London and died at Umberleigh in Devon.
Many of Furlong's books reflected a deep interest in religion and spirituality. She wrote biographies of John Bunyan, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Thérèse of Lisieux and Alan Watts as well as books covering such diverse topics as the spiritual life of aboriginals, medieval women mystics and the Church of England. She also wrote a popular series of children's novels set in medieval England and Scotland: Wise Child, Juniper, and Colman. Furlong's autobiography, Bird of Paradise, was published in 1995.
Furlong began her writing career in 1956 as a feature writer for Truth magazine, where she met Bernard Levin, who became a lifelong friend. She then joined The Spectator as its religious correspondent from 1958 until 1960, before moving to the Daily Mail, where she remained for the next eight years.
In the 1960s, Furlong became involved in religious reform. In her first book, With Love to the Church (1965), she expressed her beliefs in an inclusive Church and sided with those who felt excluded. She became a supporter of the cause of women in the Anglican Church. In the 1980s she campaigned for the ordination of women and when that goal was reached she called for the appointment of women to senior Church positions. While in her 30s Furlong had used LSD, an experience she described in her book Travelling in (1971); the work was banned from Church of Scotland bookshops.
Monica Wood
Monica Wood is the author of four works of fiction, most recently The One-in-a-Million-Boy, which won a 2017 Nautilus Award (Gold) and the 2017 fiction prize from the New England Society in the City of New York. She also is the author of Any Bitter Thing which spent 21 weeks on the American Booksellers Association extended bestseller list and was named a Book Sense Top Ten pick. Her other fiction includes Ernie’s Ark and My Only Story, a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award.
Monica is also the author of When We Were the Kennedys, a memoir of her growing up in Mexico, Maine. The book won the Maine Literary Award for Memoir in 2013, and the Sarton Women's Literary Awards for Memoir in 2012.
I hope you've found this post entertaining and educative and that from here you'll read more books written by authors called Monica. Don't forget to let me know if you already knew any of these authors or any of their works!
