Baron Bálint Balassi de Kékkő et Gyarmat was a Hungarian Renaissance lyric poet. He wrote mostly in Hungarian, but was also proficient in eight more languages: Latin, Italian, German, Polish, Turkish, Slovak, Croatian and Romanian. He is the founder of modern Hungarian lyric and erotic poetry.
Balli Kaur Jaswal is a Singaporean novelist, having family roots in Punjab. Her first novel Inheritance won the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014, and was adapted for a film presented at the 2017 Singapore International Festival of the Arts. Her second novel Sugarbread was a finalist for the 2015 inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize. Her third novel, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows was released in 2017, and garnered her a wider international following, driven in part by being picked as a selection for Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine online book club. Movie rights for Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows have been sold to Scott Free Productions and Film4. In 2019, the Business Times described Jaswal as "the most internationally well-known Singapore novelist after Crazy Rich Asians’ Kevin Kwan."
Balraj Sahni was an Indian film and stage actor, who is best known for Dharti Ke Lal (1946), Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Chhoti Bahen (1959), Kabuliwala (1961) and Garam Hawa (1973). He was the brother of Bhisham Sahni, noted Hindi writer, playwright, and actor.
Baltasar Gracián y Morales, S.J., better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit and Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragón). His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
Baltasar Lopes da Silva was a writer, poet and linguist from Cape Verde, who wrote in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole. With Manuel Lopes and Jorge Barbosa, he was the founder of Claridade. In 1947 he published Chiquinho, considered the greatest Cape Verdean novel and O dialecto crioulo de Cabo Verde which describes different dialects of creoles of Cape Verde. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Osvaldo Alcântara.
Baltasar Porcel i Pujol was a Spanish writer, journalist and literary critic. His enormous legacy credited him as one of the greatest authors in Catalan literature from the 20th century.
Baltazar Adam Krčelić was a Croatian historian, theologian and lawyer. After Vitezović, he was the most prominent figure in the Croatian cultural life of the time.
Balthasar Bekker was a Dutch minister and author of philosophical and theological works. Opposing superstition, he was a key figure in the end of the witchcraft persecutions in early modern Europe. His best known work is De Betoverde Weereld (1691), or The World Bewitched (1695).
Balthasar Walther was a Silesian physician and Christian Kabbalist of German ethnicity. Born in Liegnitz in modern Poland, Walther was a significant influence on the thought of the German theosopher Jakob Böhme. As an itinerant Paracelsian enthusiast, Walther was active throughout the Holy Roman Empire, in Poland, Transylvania and elsewhere. He died in Paris sometime before December 1631.
