Writers and literary biographies

Bienvenido Lumbera

Bienvenido Lumbera (1932–2021), known as Bien Lumbera or Ka Bien, was a Filipino poet, playwright, essayist, and literary critic who was named National Artist for Literature in 2006.

Bienvenido Santos

Bienvenido Santos (1911–1996) was a Filipino novelist, short story writer, and poet whose work chronicles Filipino exile in America; his collection Scent of Apples won the 1980 American Book Award.

Bihārī Lāl

Bihārī Lāl (बिहारीलाल) was a Hindi poet who wrote the Satsai, about 700 Braj Bhasha couplets on Radha and Krishna, at the court of Amber.

Biharilal Chakraborty

Biharilal Chakraborty was a Bengali poet of Kolkata, a pioneer of modern Bengali lyric poetry remembered as the poetic guru of Rabindranath Tagore, who called him the bird of dawn.

Bijan Elahi

Bijan Elahi (بیژن الهی; 1945–2010) was an Iranian modernist poet and translator, a leading figure of the Other Poetry movement who published almost no poetry in his lifetime.

Bijan Jalali

Bijan Jalali (بیژن جلالی, 1928–1999) was an Iranian modernist poet born in Tehran, a pioneer of she'r-e sepid (white verse), known for short, simple, prose-like poems on solitude and death.

Bilge Karasu

Bilge Karasu (1930–1995) was a Turkish writer known for experimental, densely symbolic fiction treating loneliness, fear, and death; his novel Gece (Night) won the Pegasus Literature Award.

Bill Bryson (born 1951, Des Moines, Iowa) is an American-British author of humorous travel, language, and science books, including Notes from a Small Island and A Short History of Nearly Everything, Aventis and Descartes Prize winner and former Durham University chancellor.

Bill Finger

Bill Finger (Milton Finger, 1914-1974), American comics writer, uncredited co-creator of Batman with Bob Kane: named Bruce Wayne and Gotham City, wrote the Detective Comics #27 debut script, co-created the Joker, later honored by the Bill Finger Award.

Bill Jemas

Bill Jemas (born 1958) is an American media entrepreneur and comics executive who co-led Marvel Comics' turnaround and created the Ultimate Marvel and MAX imprints.

Bill Lancaster

Bill Lancaster (William Henry Lancaster, 1947–1997), American screenwriter and son of actor Burt Lancaster; wrote The Bad News Bears (1976) and The Thing (1982), married Kippie Kovacs, died of cardiac arrest at 49.

Bill Manhire

Bill Manhire, born in 1946, is a New Zealand poet, fiction writer, and teacher who was the country's first Poet Laureate and founded its first creative writing program.

Bill Mantlo

Bill Mantlo, American comic book writer of Marvel's 1970s-1980s Bronze Age, co-creator of Rocket Raccoon, Cloak and Dagger, and Marvel's Micronauts; later a public defender, disabled by a 1992 hit-and-run.

Billy Hayes (writer)

Billy Hayes (born 1947) is the American writer of Midnight Express (1977), the memoir of his 1970 hashish arrest in Istanbul, five years in Turkish prisons, and his escape from Imrali Island, later an Oscar-winning 1978 film he has publicly criticized for distorting his story.

Bimal Mitra

Bimal Mitra (বিমল মিত্র, 1912–1991) was an Indian Bengali writer of novels and short stories in Bengali and Hindi, best known for Saheb Bibi Golam.

Binapani Mohanty

Binapani Mohanty (Odia: ବୀଣାପାଣି ମହାନ୍ତି; 1936–2022) was an Indian Odia short story writer and novelist whose story "Pata Dei" won the 1990 Sahitya Akademi Award.

Bion of Smyrna

Bion of Smyrna (Βίων ὁ Σμυρναῖος) was a Greek bucolic poet, probably active in the late 2nd century BCE, whose chief surviving work is the Lament for Adonis.

Bipradas Pipilai

Bipradas Pipilai (বিপ্ৰদাস পিপিলাই) was a 15th-century Bengali poet of the Manasamangal tradition, ranked second to Bijoy Gupta, whose Manasavijay on the goddess Manasa is dated to 1495.

Bīprodās

Bīprodās (বীপ্রদাস) is a Bengali poet credited with a Manasamangal narrative poem glorifying the snake goddess Manasa, and remembered as an early writer to mention the Kalighat shrine.

Birago Diop

Birago Diop (1906–1992) was a Senegalese veterinarian, diplomat, and writer who transcribed Wolof oral tales in French in Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba (1947), a central work of Negritude literature.

Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya

Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (1924–1997) was an Indian writer in Assamese, the first Assamese author to receive the Jnanpith Award, given in 1979 for his novel Mrityunjay.

Birger Sjöberg

Birger Sjöberg (1885–1929) was a Swedish poet, songwriter, and journalist whose popular Frida songs and modernist collection Kriser och kransar (1926) helped lay the groundwork for Swedish modernism.

Birgitta Trotzig

Birgitta Trotzig (1929–2011) was a Swedish author and literary critic, regarded as a leading twentieth-century Swedish writer and a member of the Swedish Academy from 1993.

Birinchi Kumar Barua

Birinchi Kumar Barua (বিৰিঞ্চি কুমাৰ বৰুৱা) was an Assamese scholar and folklorist who wrote fiction as Bina Barua and won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Folklore of Assam in 1961.

Bishnu Dey

Bishnu Dey (বিষ্ণু দে) was a Bengali poet and art critic, a pioneer of modernism in post-Tagore Bengali literature, who won the Jnanpith Award in 1971.

Bjørnsonstipendet

Bjørnsonstipendet is a Norwegian grant for early-career writers, awarded since 1997 by the Norwegian Booksellers' Association at the Bjørnson Festival in Molde, with recipients including Karl Ove Knausgård.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer, poet, and playwright who won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature and wrote the lyrics of Norway's national anthem.

Black Mountain poets

The Black Mountain poets were progressive American poets of the 1940s and 1950s tied to Black Mountain College, led by Charles Olson and his 1950 "projective verse" poetics.

Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch (born 1978, Statesville, North Carolina) is an American thriller and science fiction novelist, author of Dark Matter, Recursion, Upgrade, and the Wayward Pines trilogy, and showrunner of the Apple TV+ Dark Matter adaptation.