May 25, 1938

1938Raymond Carver, American short story writer and poet (died 1988)^[†]

Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. His breakout collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by Cathedral (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, "The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form."

1938Margaret Forster, English historian, author, and critic (died 2016)^[†]

Margaret Forster was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic, best known for the 1965 novel Georgy Girl, made into a successful film of the same name, which inspired a hit song by The Seekers. Other successes were a 2003 novel, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, biographies of Daphne du Maurier and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her memoirs Hidden Lives and Precious Lives.

1938Geoffrey Robinson, English businessman and politician^[†]

Geoffrey Robinson is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry North West for 43 years, from 1976 to 2019. He was Paymaster General from May 1997 to December 1998, resigning after the bankruptcy of his company Trans Tec. It was revealed that he had lent his government colleague Peter Mandelson £373,000 to buy a house. From 1996 to 2008 he was the owner of the New Statesman, a centre-left weekly political magazine.

1938Yury Semyonov, Russian economist and politician (died 2024)^[†]

Yury Nikolaevich Semyonov was a Russian economist and politician. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he served as first secretary of the Kaliningrad Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991.