The writers we lost in 2014: Goodbye Maya Angelou, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the father of Clifford the Big Red Dog

Writers we lost in 2014

1/11

Maya Angelou, poet and author of the groundbreaking, bestselling memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” died in May at age 86. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

2/11

Gabriel Garcia Marquez greets fans on his 87th birthday. The Nobel Prize-winning author of “100 Years of Solitude” died about a month later, in April. (Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)

3/11

Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer, known for her literary critiques of apartheid, died in South Africa in July; she was 90. (Ulf Andersen / Getty Images)

4/11

Poet, playwright and activist Amiri Baraka, shown reading in 2003, died in January at age 79. (Robert Abbott Sengstacke / Getty Images)

5/11

Norman Bridwell, creator of Clifford the Big Red Dog, died at age 86 in December. (Stuart Ramson / Associated Press)

6/11

National Book Award-winning novelist Peter Matthiessen, a co-founder of The Paris Review, died in April at age 86. (Ee Betz / Associated Press)

7/11

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand, shown at the 1999 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, died in November at age 80. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

8/11

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell, shown in 1985, died in October at age 87. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

9/11

Lauren Bacall in 1950 with her husband, Humphrey Bogart. Bacall, who wrote three candid memoirs, told The Times, “Writing a book is the most complete experience I’ve ever had.” She died in August at age 89. (Uncredited / AP)

10/11

Louis Zamperini, Olympian and World War II veteran, in 2002 with his memoir, “Devil at My Heels.” Author Laura Hillenbrand’s book about him, “Unbroken,” has been adapted as a film; Zamperini died in July at 97. (Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times)

11/11

Writer and spoken-word artist Maggie Estep died in February in Albany, N.Y., two days after having a heart attack; she was 50. (Bob Berg / Getty Images)

By Carolyn Kellogg

Dec. 31, 2014 8 AM PT

All told, the writers who left us in 2014 penned hundreds of children’s books, poetry collections, novels and true stories.

We lost a National Book Award winner, a revealing Hollywood memoirist, two Nobel Prize winners, beloved children’s book authors, prize-winning poets and an Olympian whose story is now a major motion picture. Here’s look back at the writers who passed away in 2014.

Book news and more; I’m @paperhaus on Twitter

Writers we lost in 2014

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