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- Osama Anwar Okasha was born on 27 July 1941 in Tanta, Egypt. Osama Anwar was a writer, known for Zeezinya (1997), Katibat el-Idam (1989) and The Alexandrian (2024). Osama Anwar died on 28 May 2010 in Cairo, Egypt.
- Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought home due to a local outbreak of disease. Two years later she attended the Abbey Boarding School in Reading, reportedly wanting to follow her sister Cassandra, until 1786.
Jane was mostly educated at home, where she learned how to play the piano, draw and write creatively. She read frequently and later came to enjoy social events such as parties, dances and balls. She disliked the busy life of towns and preferred the country life, where she took to taking long walks.
In 1801 Jane, her parents and sister moved to Bath, a year after her father's retirement, and the family frequented the coast. While on one of those coastal holidays she met a young man, but the resulting romantic involvement ended tragically when he died. It is believed by many astute Austen fans that her novel, "Persuasion", was inspired by this incident.
Following her father's passing in January of 1805--which left his widow and daughters with financial problems--the family moved several times until finally settling into a small house, in Chawton, Hampshire, owned by her brother Edward, which is reminiscent of "Sense and Sensibility". It was in this house that she wrote most of her works.
In March of 1817 her health began to decline and she was forced to abandon her work on "Sanditon", which she never completed. It turned out that she had Addisons disease. In April she wrote out her will and then on May 24th moved with Cassandra to Winchester, to be near her physician. It was in Winchester she died, in the arms of her sister, on Friday, 18 July 1817, at the age of only 41. She was buried the 24th of July at Winchester Cathedral. Jane never married.
During her formative years, Jane wrote plays and poems. At 14 she wrote her first novel, "Love and Freindship [sic]" and other juvenilia. Her first (unsuccessful) submission to a publisher, however, was in 1797 titled "First Impressions" (later "Pride and Prejudice"). In 1803 "Susan" (later "Northanger Abbey") was actually sold to a publisher for a mere £10 but was not published until 14 years later, posthumously. Her first accepted work was in 1811 titled "Sense and Sensibility", which was published anonymously as were all books published during her lifetime. She revised "First Impressions" and published it entitled "Pride and Prejudice" in 1813. "Mansfield Park" was published in 1814, followed by "Emma" in 1816, the same year she completed "Persuasion" and began "Sanditon", which was ultimately left unfinished. Both "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey" were published in 1818, after her death. - Writer
- Producer
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, John Michael Hayes began his writing career as a newspaper reporter. Following service with the US Army during WWII, he moved to California where he wrote for such radio dramas as Sam Spade and Inner Sanctum. Moving to film in 1952, he has amassed credits which span over 40 years and include such enduring titles as Rear Window (1954) and Peyton Place (1957). For the last several years, Mr. Hayes has taught film writing to a new generation of artists at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, but has now (2000) retired.- Ihsan Abdel Quddous was born on 1 January 1919 in Egypt. He was a writer, known for El wessada el khalia (1957), El-Raqesah wa el-Tabbal (1984) and Abi foq al-Shagara (1969). He died on 11 January 1990 in Cairo, Egypt.
- Fathiya Al Assal is known for Romanet Al Mizan (2008) and Heya Wa Al Mustaheel (1979).
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Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name "King," under which Stephen was born. He has an older brother, David. The Kings were a typical family until one night, when Donald said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard from again. Ruth took over raising the family with help from relatives. They traveled throughout many states over several years, finally moving back to Durham, Maine, in 1958.
Stephen began his actual writing career in January of 1959, when David and Stephen decided to publish their own local newspaper named "Dave's Rag". David bought a mimeograph machine, and they put together a paper they sold for five cents an issue. Stephen attended Lisbon High School, in Lisbon, in 1962. Collaborating with his best friend Chris Chesley in 1963, they published a collection of 18 short stories called "People, Places, and Things--Volume I". King's stories included "Hotel at the End of the Road", "I've Got to Get Away!", "The Dimension Warp", "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well", "The Stranger", "I'm Falling", "The Cursed Expedition", and "The Other Side of the Fog." A year later, King's amateur press, Triad and Gaslight Books, published a two-part book titled "The Star Invaders".
King made his first actual published appearance in 1965 in the magazine Comics Review with his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber." The story ran about 6,000 words in length. In 1966 he graduated from high school and took a scholarship to attend the University of Maine. Looking back on his high school days, King recalled that "my high school career was totally undistinguished. I was not at the top of my class, nor at the bottom." Later that summer King began working on a novel called "Getting It On", about some kids who take over a classroom and try unsuccessfully to ward off the National Guard. During his first year at college, King completed his first full-length novel, "The Long Walk." He submitted the novel to Bennett Cerf/Random House only to have it rejected. King took the rejection badly and filed the book away.
He made his first small sale--$35--with the story "The Glass Floor". In June 1970 King graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and a certificate to teach high school. King's next idea came from the poem by Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." He found bright colored green paper in the library and began work on "The Dark Tower" saga, but his chronic shortage of money meant that he was unable to further pursue the novel, and it, too, was filed away. King took a job at a filling station pumping gas for the princely sum of $1.25 an hour. Soon he began to earn money for his writings by submitting his short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier.
On January 2, 1971, he married Tabitha King (born Tabitha Jane Spruce). In the fall of 1971 King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy, earning $6,400 a year. The Kings then moved to Hermon, a town west of Bangor. Stephen then began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White. After completing a few pages, he decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed them into the trash. Fortunately, Tabitha took the pages out and read them. She encouraged her husband to continue the story, which he did. In January 1973 he submitted "Carrie" to Doubleday. In March Doubleday bought the book. On May 12 the publisher sold the paperback rights for the novel to New American Library for $400,000. His contract called for his getting half of that sum, and he quit his teaching job to pursue writing full time. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since then King has had numerous short stories and novels published and movies made from his work. He has been called the "Master of Horror". His books have been translated into 33 different languages, published in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his novels in publication. He continues to live in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, and writes out of his home.
In June 1999 King was severely injured in an accident, he was walking alongside a highway and was hit by a van, that left him in critical condition with injuries to his lung, broken ribs, a broken leg and a severely fractured hip. After three weeks of operations, he was released from the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.- Writer
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Robert Riskin was born on 30 March 1897 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). He was married to Fay Wray. He died on 20 September 1955 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Journalist, author, biographer and historian Samuel Hopkins Adams was born along the banks of Lake Erie at Dunkirk, NY, on 26 January 1871. His parents were Myron, a ministe3r, and Hester Rose Hopkins Adams, the daughter of a theologian. Adams attended Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, and upon graduation began working as a newspaper reporter and later editor.
In the early years of the 20th century Adams became one of the pioneers in "muckraking journalism" with his exposes on the patent-medicine industry published in Collier's Magazine. He would later write a number of informational articles on health and medicine and become an associate member of the American Medical Association, even though he lacked a background in medicine. Adams was probably the first journalist to write articles on health that could be understood by the average reader
Adams' first novel, "The Clarion", was published in 1914 and told the story of an idealistic editor trying to run an honest newspaper amid unscrupulous advertisers and corrupt politicians. A reoccurring theme throughout Adams' novels was the triumph of idealism over corruption. He wrote biographies on writer Alexander Woollcott, American politician Daniel Webster and President Warren G. Harding. Earlier supporters of Harding tried to suppress Adams' novel "Revelry" (1926) for its portrayal of the various scandals that had plagued the Harding administration. Adams wrote a number of "detective Average Jones" mystery stories that would later be adapted to radio. Under the pseudonym Warner Fabian he wrote several novels about the "Lost Generation" in the years following World War I, of which "Flaming Youth" (1923) was probably his best known.
An expert on the history of New York state, Adams wrote a series of articles for "The New Yorker" on the Erie Canal that were gathered together in 1955 and published under the title "Godfather Stories". He also authored "Canal Town" (1944) that told the story of the canal's construction, "Banner by the Wayside" about a 19th-century troupe of traveling New York actors and "Sunrise to Sunset", which chronicled the rise of the union movement in New York's garment district.
Adams married Elizabeth R. Noyes (1877-1957) of Charleston, WV, in 1898. The couple had two daughters before their divorce in 1915. Later that year he married former stage actress Jane Peyton Van Norman (1880-1946).
Adams died on 15 November 1958, while at his winter residence in Beaufort, SC. He was survived by his daughters, Hester and Katherine. - Writer
- Producer
Through more than 100 films, TV dramas, radio shows and theatrical productions, Egyptian screenwriter Wahid Hamed carved a place for himself in the Arab world by utilizing all the dramatic tools he could get his hands on since the 1970s and over 50 years. The success of his work was reflected in the rave reviews received from audiences and critics alike for his indelible masterpieces, such as the celebrated films Al Bare'e (The Innocent), Al Le'eb Ma'a Al Kobar (Playing with Giants), Al Erhab Wal Kabab (Terrorists and Kebab), Toyour Elzalam (Birds of the Dark), Edhak El Soura Tetla'a Helwa (Smile, the Photo May Look Nicer), El Ghoul (The Ogre), Ehky Ya Shahrzad Film (Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story), Malaf Fel Adab (Vice Police), El Takhsheeba (In Prison), and Kashf El Mastour (Revelations), as well as serial dramas: Al Gama'a (The Party), Al A'aela (The Family), and Bedoun Zekr Asmaa (Without Mentioning Names).
The importance of his films was not only apparent through their ticket sales at the box office, or the number of awards that Wahid Hamed won for screenwriting, but also through the challenges his films faced in regards to censorship. The most notable film that faced similar struggles was Al Bare'e (The Innocent), but the list also includes other films, such as Al Ghoul (The Ogre), Toyour Elzalam (Birds of the Dark), Al Takhshiba (Imprisonment), Kashf El Mastour (Revelations), and El Noom Fel Asal (Sleeping in Honey).
In Egypt, which has the oldest and largest cinema industry in the Arab world, there is an unwritten rule that all writers must abide by. The rule states that writing in general, and writing dramas in particular, are all stages that precede screenwriting as the field that enjoys more attention from the public.
Throughout the years, his films remain to be highly valued by the audiences and critics alike. Hamed is one of the earliest Egyptian writers who highlighted terrorism in his work of films, TV series, and published articles, which blacklisted his name during the 1990s.
Hamed began his career as a radio scriptwriter in the 1970s with his series Ta'aer El Leil El Hazeen, which achieved massive success and attracted the attention of producers that Hamed transformed it into a film screenplay, which also gained wide acclaim. To date, Wahid Hamed remains the writer with the most works that have been transformed from radio series scripts to movie scripts and acclaimed TV dramas. Among his many successful projects are: Ana Wenty Wa Sa'at Alsafar, El-Donya A'la Genah Yamama, and Kol Haza Al Hob.
Since the mid-1980s, Hamed dedicated his attention to cinema. Therefore, he was keen on remaining up to date with the latest screenwriting trends in Egypt and around the world. Hamed insisted on being deeply acquainted with his main characters, which enabled him to present unique and unseen worlds from the top and bottom of Egyptian society equally well, form prisons and detention facilities, to camps of Central Security Forces and the halls of the ruling party, the behind-the-scenes of football matches, luxurious private parties and even thieves' dens and gypsies' hideaways.
Throughout his career, Wahid Hamed collaborated with the most prominent directors of different generations, including Samir Seif who helmed over 13 films and TV series written by Wahid, Sherif Arafa (six films), Atef El Tayeb (five films), Hussein Kamal, Yousry Nasrallah, Mohamed Yassin, Tamer Mohsen, Ali Abdel Khalek, Mohamed Abdelaziz, Nader galal, Atef Salem, Omar Abdel Aziz, Muhammad Ali, Sherif Elbendary and Marwan Hamed. Also, his films featured some of the biggest stars, including Adel Emam, Nour El Sherif, Ahmed Zaki, Yousra,Yehia El-Fakharany, Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, Mahmoud Morsi, Farid Shawqi, Nabila Ebeid, Madiha Kamel, Nadia El Gendy, Elham Shahin and Laila Eloui. Furthermore, his works featured prominent Arab stars, at the time, including Mahmoud Abdel Moghny, Asser Yassin and Mohamed Farrag.
In addition, Hamed produced a number of TV series, such as: Al Gawareh, El Bashayer, Eldam w Elnar and Al Gama'a, along with several films like El Lea'b Ma'a Elkobar, El-Mansy, Toyoor El-Zalam, El Noom Fi El Asal and Ma'ali Al-Wazir.
Throughout his career, Wahid received full recognition for his works, including dozens of awards and accolades, either granted by the state-run and foreign entities or voted by audience. These awards include the State Appreciation Award (2008), The Nile Prize (2012), which is the highest award granted by the country, The Golden Pyramid Award for Lifetime Achievement from the prestigious Cairo International Film Festival (2020), as well as the America Abroad Media's (AAM) Award (2018).
Furthermore, Hamed's films reaped a plethora of Best Screenplay awards, including Best Screenplay Award from the Valencia Film Festival (1991) for Al Le'eb Ma'a Al Kobar (Playing with Giants), Silver Award for Best Film at the Milano Festival for African Cinema (1993) for Al Erhab Wal Kabab (Terrorists and Kebab), and the Arab Lifetime Achievement Award at Dubai International Film Festival.- Producer
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Pete Docter is the Oscar®-winning director of "Monsters, Inc.," "Up," and "Inside Out," and Chief Creative Officer at Pixar Animation Studios. He is currently directing Pixar's feature film "Soul" with producer Dana Murray, which is set to release June 19, 2020.
Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio's third animator, Docter collaborated and help develop the story and characters for "Toy Story," Pixar's first full-length animated feature film, for which he also was supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on "A Bug's Life," and wrote initial story treatments for both "Toy Story 2" and "WALL.E." Aside from directing his three films, Docter also executive produced "Monsters University" and the Academy Award®-winning "Brave."
Docter's interest in animation began at the age of eight when he created his first flipbook. He studied character animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short films, one of which won a Student Academy Award®. Those films have since been shown in animation festivals worldwide and are featured on the "Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2." Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards® including Best Animated Feature-winners "Up" and "Inside Out" and nominee "Monsters, Inc.," and Best Original Screenplay for "Up," "Inside Out" and "WALL.E." In 2007, "Up" also was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.- Naguib Mahfouz was born on 11 December 1911 in Cairo, Egypt. He was a writer, known for El Fetewa (1957), The Monster (1954) and Between Heaven and Earth (1959). He was married to Atiyyatallah Ibrahim. He died on 30 August 2006 in Cairo, Egypt.
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William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an unknown financial setback, though the family home remained in his possession. An affair with Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and a nearby farmer's daughter, led to pregnancy and a hasty marriage late in 1582. Susanna was born in May of 1583, twins Hamnet and Judith in January of 1585. By 1592 he was an established actor and playwright in London though his "career path" afterward (fugitive? butcher? soldier? actor?) is highly debated. When plague closed the London theatres for two years he apparently toured; he also wrote two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". He may have spent this time at the estate of the Earl of Southampton. By December 1594 he was back in London as a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company he stayed with the rest of his life. In 1596 he seems to have purchased a coat of arms for his father; the same year Hamnet died at age 11. The following year he purchased the grand Stratford mansion New Place. A 1598 edition of "Love's Labors" was the first to bear his name, though he was already regarded as England's greatest playwright. He is believed to have written his "Sonnets" during the 1590s. In 1599 he became a partner in the new Globe Theatre, the company of which joined the royal household on the accession of James in 1603. That is the last year in which he appeared in a cast list. He seems to have retired to Stratford in 1612, where he continued to be active in real estate investment. The cause of his death is unknown.- Tewfik El-Hakim, an Egyptian writer, is the son of a noble Turkish lady. He gave up studying law and turned to art and literature, and started writing plays from the early age. But his main works were written after his studies in France. Al-Hakim can be known as father of solid script writing and modern Arabic novel. Amongst his works, the most outstanding ones are his intellectual plays. Intellectual and reflective concerns, abstract characterization and atmosphere, brilliant dialogues, taking benefit from myth; and being highly affected by French symbolism are main characteristics of these plays
- Azza Shalaby is known for Mafish Ghair Kedah (2006), Asrar el-banaat (2001) and Qanoun El Maraghi (2009).
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Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (1996) is the trilogy closed. Here, as in 'Den Goda Viljan' Pernilla August play his mother. Note that all three movies are not always full true biographical stories. He began his career early with a puppet theatre which he, his sister and their friends played with. But he was the manager. Strictly professional he begun writing in 1941. He had written a play called 'Kaspers död' (A.K.A. 'Kaspers Death') which was produced the same year. It became his entrance into the movie business as Stina Bergman (not a close relative), from the company S.F. (Swedish Filmindustry), had seen the play and thought that there must be some dramatic talent in young Ingmar. His first job was to save other more famous writers' poor scripts. Under one of that script-saving works he remembered that he had written a novel about his last year as a student. He took the novel, did the save-poor-script job first, then wrote a screenplay on his own novel. When he went back to S.F., he delivered two scripts rather than one. The script was Torment (1944) and was the fist Bergman screenplay that was put into film (by Alf Sjöberg). It was also in that movie Bergman did his first professional film-director job. Because Alf Sjöberg was busy, Bergman got the order to shoot the last sequence of the film. Ingmar Bergman is the father of Daniel Bergman, director, and Mats Bergman, actor at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater. Ingmar Bergman was also C.E.O. of the same theatre between 1963-1966, where he hired almost every professional actor in Sweden. In 1976 he had a famous tax problem. Bergman had trusted other people to advise him on his finances, but it turned out to be very bad advice. Bergman had to leave the country immediately, and so he went to Germany. A few years later he returned to Sweden and made his last theatrical film Fanny and Alexander (1982). In later life he retired from movie directing, but still wrote scripts for film and T.V. and directed plays at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre for many years. He died peacefully in his sleep on July 30, 2007.- Writer
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The Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, acquired a reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language during the first half of the 20th Century for the plays he had written at the height of his creativity from "Mrs. Warren's Profession" in 1893 to "The Apple Cart" in 1929. His works have been revived on Broadway from 1894 to 2010. His most famous work in the 21st Century is My Fair Lady (1964), the musical adaptation of Pygmalion (1938).
A Shavian drama (his reputation was so great, he had his own adjective ascribed to his works) had a biting social critique leavened by humor. According to his Nobel Prize citation, "His ideas were those of a somewhat abstract logical radicalism; hence they were far from new, but they received from him a new definiteness and brilliance. In him these ideas combined with a ready wit, a complete absence of respect for any kind of convention, and the merriest humor - all gathered together in an extravagance which has scarcely ever before appeared in literature."
He was a major international celebrity and a force in British politics, being a charter member of the Fabian Society. The Fabians were committed to democratic socialism, that is, using parliamentary mechanisms to encourage a gradual adoption of socialist policies through political reform rather than revolution.- Mariam Naoum, an Egyptian screenwriter, comes from a family of accomplished artists; her father, Nabil Naoum, is a novelist with several published works and her mother, Suzanne El Masry, a well-known jeweler of unique hand-made silver and bronze designs. Mariam studied economics in France then returned to Egypt to study screen writing, graduating from the High Cinema Institute - Screenwriting department - in 2000. After her graduation from the Institute she worked for several years in different fields including short feature films, programs, documentaries, children's series and programs, as well as commercials for television.
Mariam is considered a leading social/ feminist screenwriter and her work addresses the challenges of those who are marginalized both socially and economically with a special focus on women's issues. Her passion for dramatic screen writing is because she considers it a mirror of society with the ability to express a powerful mixture of emotions in each moment. - Bahgat Kamar was born on 27 July 1937 in Egypt. He was a writer and actor, known for The Most Dangerous Man in the World (1967), El-Raqesah wa el-Tabbal (1984) and El mughammerun el talata (1966). He died on 3 January 1989 in Cairo, Egypt.
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Abo El Seoud El Ebiary is known for Assir el aioun (1949), El Millioner (1950) and Fail kheir (1953).- Ali El Zorkani is known for Min aina laka haza? (1952), Shati el zekriat (1955) and House No. 13 (1952).
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Youssef Gohar is known for Amir el-Inteqam (1950), Arduna el khadra (1956) and The Beloved Diva (1967).- Wessam Soliman is known for Factory Girl (2013), Fi shaket Masr El Gedeeda (2007) and Downtown Girls (2005). He was previously married to Mohamed Khan.
- Shady Abdullah is known for Face and Back (2022) and Why not? (2020).