Podcasts by Garrison Keillors Podcast
Funny, poignant, sentimental, and sometimes controversial thoughts of the day.
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A happy summer clears the air from 2023-12-09T23:00
Friday afternoon, I boarded the Lake Shore Limited in New York, bound for Chicago and then the Grand Canyon, along with my Londoner stepdaughter and her husband who are ambitious hikers and eager t...
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A lovely lunch last week in New Haven from 2023-12-02T23:00
At lunch with a pregnant woman, you talk about ordinary life, family, summer, the food, the elation of the kids at the graduation we’d attended that morning and the pride of their parents, and we n...
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A few minutes on a hilltop in Concord from 2023-11-25T23:00
Thoreau’s great work wasn’t Walden but his daily journal in which he wrote about his walks in the woods and fields, what he saw, what he loved. Walden is blighted by a great deal of pontificating a...
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A private word from me to Joe from 2023-11-18T23:00
Biden needs a sport to put to rest the whispers about dodderiness. It’s nice to see him putting his arms around his dog and his grandkids — his predecessor was no hugger except with a few foreign l...
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Canada is burning but we're doing okay from 2023-11-11T23:00
I’m not nostalgic about olden times. I love these passwords and PIN numbers that give me the sense of foreign agents trying to get into my email, steal my prescription for metoprolol. I am fond of ...
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Why I love the Shenandoah Valley from 2023-11-04T22:00
I hung out with the customers before and after (there’s no backstage at this amphitheater so I entered and exited through the audience) and it’s startling to hear middle-aged people tell me they li...
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The art of leaving home from 2023-10-28T22:00
The pleasure of moving is the excavation of the past. I open a box and here’s a photo of my fifth-grade class, the eager neatly-combed-and-dressed boy with glasses sitting behind John Poate is me. ...
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Enough about them, this is about me from 2023-10-25T13:20:26
When I moved out of Minneapolis, I sorted through personal papers and it struck me that, in hundreds of pictures of me, I am not smiling in a single one. I look like a mortician with a migraine. Pa...
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The beauty of a bitterly cold Sunday, 8 a.m. from 2023-10-14T22:00:55
What I found inspiring were two Scripture readings, one from the prophet Micah, where the reader faced the line, “O my people, remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal that you may know the sa...
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Marriage is a game and two can play it from 2023-10-07T22:00:06
She also loves to look at art, which I can take or leave and mostly leave. I go to museums to overhear conversations between couples, usually the woman telling the man, “You don’t like it, do you” ...
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Manhattan man living in the past from 2023-09-30T22:00
I interrupted writing for a while today to have a Zoom meeting about estate planning with a couple lawyers in Minneapolis and for a discussion centered on my own demise it was a lot of fun. We laug...
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Father Time advises a brown-eyed girl from 2023-09-23T22:00
Prison reform is a truly noble cause because there is no political constituency demanding it. Every time I fly into LaGuardia, I look out at the hellhole of Rikers Island, a prison right out of Dic...
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Thinking about that woman in Kentucky from 2023-09-16T22:00
The woman came by a little later and said, “How’s your breakfast, dear?” I said, “It’s wonderful,” though actually it was rather mediocre, but I didn’t want to cause her anxiety because — this is g...
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So this guy in New York walks into a grocery store from 2023-09-09T22:00
There is so much plasticity and pretense in the world today that when I come across the authentic such as a little kid bawling because his sister kicked him, it restores my interest in life. He isn...
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The daily pursuit of happiness from 2023-09-02T22:00:08
Texting replaced the postcard mostly, and I have a shoebox full of old postcards from long-departed relatives about the happy afternoon spent in Pasadena or Lincoln’s home in Springfield or the Emp...
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A week in Kansas and Missouri from 2023-08-26T22:01
Journalism is about tragedy and malfeasance and corruption, it’s not journalists’ job to report on happiness, you need to experience that directly, which I did, night after night, standing in dim l...
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We get around correctness by means of comedy from 2023-08-19T22:00:08
I feel that opera should be inclusive and tell the stories of ordinary people and not just European aristocracy and so I am sketching an opera in which the soprano is furious at the tenor and showi...
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The author disembarks almost from 2023-08-12T22:00:27
I am not disheartened by insignificance. I am content to be a bug. Insectitude is no problem at all. I grew up with stories in which God is seen as a person, or three persons, and He speaks to His ...
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I missed out on the big storm regretfully from 2023-08-05T22:00:03
In Florida, people live in dormitories for the elderly, watching golf on TV, which turns your mind to lime gelatin. In their working lives, they practiced law, healed the sick, managed money, and n...
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There's money in dystopia but so what? from 2023-07-29T22:00:04
One advantage for us Christians of living in New York is that we’re a small minority just like in early A.D. living among Romans and Turks so we can’t lord it over people. We walk quietly. If schoo...
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I am giving up anger, so should you from 2023-07-22T22:00:55
If you’re considering larceny, my dear reader, stop and think this through. Cellphone towers can track your whereabouts and the country is full of surveillance cameras. Twenty-eight grand is poor c...
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Thou shalt not be dumber than dirt from 2023-07-15T22:01:05
I take Scripture seriously and so I eat beef as it tells us we can in Leviticus, and I also eat salads but not Caesar salads because he was a pagan emperor, but I admit to giving in to wrath, which...
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The old man's lecture about manners from 2023-07-08T22:00
Six a.m. at the MSP airport, a February morning, long lines of sleepy travelers snaking their way toward Security, and I approach the scanner and a TSA lady sees that I haven’t removed my shoes and...
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Music as a means of detecting a Heart from 2023-07-01T22:00
It’s not often a person gets to experience euphoria. For years I imagined alcohol could do the job if I could just find the right brand but eventually I gave up on that. Sometimes in church I’ve fe...
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A pound and a half? Really? Why? from 2023-06-24T22:00
Welcome to Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. We plan to release one podcast per week (sometimes more). Feel free to comment and share with friends.“I’m not opposed to legalization; I think it’s crazy to ...
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That cold day I was naked in Utah from 2023-06-21T02:15:05
We are going to produce a weekly Garrison Keillor’s Podcast soon, kicking off in short order. At the start, the majority of these will be audio recordings of columns previously published in the new...
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, April 21, 2022 from 2022-04-21T08:00:02
Naturalist John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, on this day in 1838. The founder of the Sierra Club was essential in protecting American wilderness areas.
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The Writer's Almanac Wednesday, April 20, 2022 from 2022-04-20T08:00:02
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root”—The song “Strange Fruit” was recorded on this day in 1939 by Billie Holiday.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, April 19, 2022 from 2022-04-19T08:00:02
"There are no good girls gone wrong, just bad girls found out."—author and Actress Mae West, who was jailed on this day in 1927 for her performance in “Sex” on broadway.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, April 18, 2022 from 2022-04-18T08:00:02
Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Susan Faludi was born on this day in 1959. Her latest work is a memoir, “In the Darkroom.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, April 17, 2022 from 2022-04-17T08:00:02
"The sentence is my primary element, my tool, goal, bliss. Each new sentence is a heart-in-the mouth experiment." -- novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick, was born on this day in 1928.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, April 16, 2022 from 2022-04-16T08:00:02
The originator of “The Boxcar Children,” author Gertrude Chandler Warner was born on this day in 1890. She wrote the first 18 of the series.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, April 15, 2022 from 2022-04-15T08:00:02
570 years ago, on April 15th, the original Renaissance Man was born in Tuscany, Leonardo da Vinci (1452).
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, April 14, 2022 from 2022-04-14T08:00:02
It was on this day in 1828 that Noah Webster's “American Dictionary of the English Language” was published.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, April 13, 2022 from 2022-04-13T08:00:02
It's the birthday of Thomas Jefferson (1743) who said, "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, April 12, 2022 from 2022-04-12T08:00:06
It's the 70th birthday of author Gary Soto. His most recent work is a collection of poetry “Meatballs for the People: Proverbs to Chew On” published in 2017.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, April 11, 2022 from 2022-04-11T08:00:04
On this day in 1945, the U.S. Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, April 10, 2022 from 2022-04-10T08:00:02
On this day in 1925 “The Great Gatsby” was first published to a mixed reception. Now viewed as a classic, in 2020 it entered the public domain.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, April 9, 2022 from 2022-04-09T08:00:03
On this day in 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, April 8, 2022 from 2022-04-08T08:00:05
The editor and publisher Robert Giroux was born on this day, 1914. He published Jean Stafford, Robert Lowell, and Flannery O’Connor.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, April 7, 2022 from 2022-04-07T08:00:04
Today, for his 252nd birthday, we hear a poem by William Wordsworth “I Have Thoughts that Are Fed by the Sun”
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The Writer's Almanac Wednesday, April 6, 2022 from 2022-04-06T08:00:07
On this day in 1748, excavations began to unearth the doomed city of Pompeii, the city buried in ash after the 79 BCE eruption of Mount Vesuvious.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, April 5, 2022 from 2022-04-05T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of 16th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, born in 1837.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, April 4, 2022 from 2022-04-04T08:00:02
Today we celebrate the 1928 birth of Maya Angelou, author of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and 35 other books.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, April 3, 2022 from 2022-04-03T08:00:02
Today is the 88th birthday of Dr. Jane Goodall who said “What makes us human, I think, is the ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, April 2, 2022 from 2022-04-02T08:00:02
“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.” -- Émile Zola, born on this day in 1840.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, April 1, 2022 from 2022-04-01T08:00:02
Kenyan teacher, author, and environmentalist Wangari Muta Maathai was born on this day, 1940. Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, March 31, 2022 from 2022-03-31T08:00:02
César Chávez was born on this day in 1927. His leadership on labor and civil rights enmeshed his name with the organized labor movement. President Biden keeps a bust of Chávez behind his desk in th...
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, March 30, 2022 from 2022-03-30T08:00:02
Minnesota teacher and author Jon Hassler was born on this day 1933. Author of 12 novels, several set in the fictional town of Staggerford.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 29, 2022 from 2022-03-29T08:00:02
Monty Python star, Eric Idle, celebrates his 79th birthday today. Idle wrote many of Python’s songs including “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” and won a Tony for the musical “Spamalot” in ...
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, March 28, 2022 from 2022-03-28T08:00:02
"A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery." -- Nelson Algren, born on this day in Detroit, 1909.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, March 27, 2022 from 2022-03-27T08:00:02
John O’Farrell celebrates his 60th birthday today. He's a columnist, a stand-up comedian, and an author. His latest work is a novel, “There’s Only Two David Beckhams.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, March 26, 2022 from 2022-03-26T08:00:02
It’s the 80th birthday of the author Erica Jong. Best known for the boldly sexual feminist novel “Fear of Flying”. Her most recent work is a poetry collection, The World Began with Yes (2019).
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, March 25, 2022 from 2022-03-25T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of Flannery O'Connor (1925), who said that her subject was "the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil."
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, March 24, 2022 from 2022-03-24T08:00:02
"The easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place someone is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will result in sudden death." –Ha...
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, March 23, 2022 from 2022-03-23T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, born in Tokyo, Japan (1910). Best known for his film “Rashomon.” George Lucas said he lifted the plot of Star Wars from Kurosawa’s epic, “Hidden F...
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 22, 2022 from 2022-03-22T08:00:02
“While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane.” – poet Billy Collins, born on this day in 1941.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, March 21, 2022 from 2022-03-21T08:00:03
Today in 1965 thousands of marchers left Selma, Alabama, headed to Montgomery, to protest the disenfranchisement of African-American voters.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, March 20, 2022 from 2022-03-20T08:00:02
On this day in 1852, “Uncle Tom's Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe was published. It sold 10,000 copies in its first week and about 2 million copies by 1857.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, March 19, 2022 from 2022-03-19T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of Nikolai Gogol, born in Great Sorochintsy, Ukraine (1809). His works were very popular in Russia and strongly influenced Dostoevsky and other Russian writers of the 19th cen...
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, March 18, 2022 from 2022-03-18T08:00:03
"There is nothing but beauty — and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie." -- French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, born on this day 1842.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, March 17, 2022 from 2022-03-17T08:00:02
Novelist and children’s author Penelope Lively was born on this day in Cairo, Egypt (1933). She’s the author of "Moon Tiger" and most recently a memoir "Life in the Garden."
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, March 16 , 2022 from 2022-03-16T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of César Vallejo born in Peru, in 1892. A poet, he only published two books in his lifetime but was hailed as a revolutionary innovator of the form.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 15, 2022 from 2022-03-15T08:00:02
“Literature may come from a specific place, but it always lives in its own unique kingdom.” –Ben Okri, born in Minna, Nigeria on this day, 1959.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, March 14, 2022 from 2022-03-14T08:00:03
Sylvia Beach was born on this day in 1887. She founded the bookstore “Shakespeare and Company” in Paris which became an influential gathering place for English writers in the 1920s.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, March 13, 2022 from 2022-03-13T08:00:02
Today in 1892 Jannet Flanner was born. She became a journalist who wrote a column called “Letters From Paris” starting in 1925, and also served as a WWII war correspondent.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, March 12, 2022 from 2022-03-12T09:00:03
"Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own." -- Naomi Shihab Nye, celebrating 70 years of life today.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, March 11, 2022 from 2022-03-11T09:00:02
On this day in 1959 Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” opened on Broadway. New York Times called it “the play that changed American theater forever.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, March 10, 2022 from 2022-03-10T09:00:03
It's the birthday of the author of the style guide known as "Fowler's Modern English Usage"--Henry Watson Fowler, born in Tonbridge, England (1858).
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, March 9, 2022 from 2022-03-09T09:00:03
It's the birthday of writer Vita Sackville-West (1892), and also the publication date of her lover Virginia Woolf’s first novel “The Voyage Out” (1913).
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 8, 2022 from 2022-03-08T09:00:03
Writer John McPhee celebrates his 91st birthday today. A writer of non-fiction, his work spans a vast range of subjects from the making of canoes, to military stories, to his own genealogy.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, March 7, 2022 from 2022-03-07T09:00:04
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep" Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," published on this day in 1923.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, March 6, 2022 from 2022-03-06T09:00:02
"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it." --Gabriel García Márquez, born this day in Colombia, 1927.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, March 5, 2022 from 2022-03-05T09:00:02
Gerardus Mercator is not a household name. Born in 1512, he developed the “Mercator projection,” distorting a map so latitude and longitude lines were at right angles. It revolutionized navigation,...
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, March 4, 2022 from 2022-03-04T09:00:02
Frances Perkins became the first female U.S. Secretary of Labor on this date in 1933. She led the elimination of Child Labor, the 40-hour workweek, and Social Security.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, March 3, 2022 from 2022-03-03T09:00:03
220 years ago on this day, Ludwig van Beethoven published the "Moonlight" Sonata. Of its popularity, he said, "Surely I've written better things."
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, March 2 , 2022 from 2022-03-02T09:00:02
"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."-- Sholem Aleichem, born on this day in Ukraine, 1859.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 1, 2022 from 2022-03-01T09:00:04
Today we celebrate the birth of two poets, Robert Lowell (1917) and Richard Wilbur (1921), both two-time winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, February 28, 2022 from 2022-02-28T09:00:02
Colum McCann celebrates his 57th birthday today. His latest work, “Apeirogon,” is a novel about a friendship between two men, one Israeli and one Palestinian.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, February 27, 2022 from 2022-02-27T09:00:02
Novelist John Steinbeck was born on this day in 1902. "The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows i...
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, February 26, 2022 from 2022-02-26T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of Fats Domino (1928) who sold more records in the 1950’s than anyone other than Elvis Presley.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, February 25, 2022 from 2022-02-25T09:00:03
"Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist." -- Anthony Burgess (1972), best known as the author of the dystopian novel “A Clockwork Orange.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, February 24, 2022 from 2022-02-24T09:00:03
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." – Steve ...
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, February 23, 2022 from 2022-02-23T09:00:02
On this day in 1898 the French novelist Émile Zola was found guilty of libel for writing "J'accuse," an exposee on how the French Government had convicted an innocent man.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, February 22, 2022 from 2022-02-22T09:00:04
Today is the birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892). Millay performed her poem "Renascence" and a woman was so impressed that she paid Edna's college tuition.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, February 21, 2022 from 2022-02-21T09:00:02
This day in 1925 the first edition of The New Yorker magazine was published. The first cover was drawn by Rea Irvin. The image was a dandy in a top hat looking at a butterfly through a monocle.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, February 20, 2022 from 2022-02-20T09:00:02
On this day in 1902, Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco. His photographs of Yosemite and other wilderness areas would become familiar to millions of people.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, February 19, 2022 from 2022-02-19T09:00:02
It’s the 70th birthday of author Amy Tan, author of “The Joy Luck Club” and other novels.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, February 18, 2022 from 2022-02-18T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of Toni Morrison (1931). Her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” was published when she was 38 years old, a story about a black girl who wanted blue eyes.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, February 17, 2022 from 2022-02-17T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of science fiction writer Andre Norton (1912) who legally changed her name from Alice Mary Norton because she thought a man’s name would help her sell more books.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, February 16, 2022 from 2022-02-16T09:00:03
In the year 1740, a boy named Giambattista Bodoni was born in Saluzzo, Italy. He came from a family of engravers, and he had personally designed almost 300 typefaces.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, February 15, 2022 from 2022-02-15T09:00:02
Cartoonist Matt Groening celebrates his birthday today. Born in 1954, Groening is best known for creating “The Simpsons.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, February 14, 2022 from 2022-02-14T09:00:02
On this Valentine's Day, we remember Zelda Sayer and F. Scott Fitzgerald, a couple so famous in their day they were known by their first names, Scott and Zelda.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, February 13, 2022 from 2022-02-13T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of religious historian Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospel, and most recently, Why Religion? A Personal Story.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, February 12, 2022 from 2022-02-12T09:00:03
Judy Blume, who for decades has written memorable and provoking books for young people (and a few for adults), celebrates 84 years on earth today.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, February 11, 2022 from 2022-02-11T09:00:03
It’s the birthday of Pico Iyer (1957) who said writing should “be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent”
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, February 10, 2022 from 2022-02-10T09:00:03
"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." –Bertolt Brecht, poet & playwright born on this day in 1898.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, February 9, 2022 from 2022-02-09T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of Alice Walker (1944), author of “The Color Purple.” Her memoir “Gathering Blossums Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965-2000,” will be published this spring.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, February 8, 2022 from 2022-02-08T09:00:02
Poet Elizabeth Bishop was born on this day in 1910. She published only 101 poems in her lifetime, and reworked her poem "The Moose" for 25 years.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, February 7, 2022 from 2022-02-07T09:00:01
Today is 210 years since the birth of Charles Dickens, one of the most famous writers in the English language.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, February 5, 2022 from 2022-02-05T09:00:02
Today marks the birth of William S. Burroughs, 1914. The American novelist, poet, and painter is best known for his novel “Naked Lunch.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, February 4, 2022 from 2022-02-04T09:00:03
Novelist MacKinlay Kantor was born on this day in 1904. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “Andersonville” (1955), about a Confederate prison camp, which he spent 25 years researching.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, February 3, 2022 from 2022-02-03T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of painter Norman Rockwell (1894), the first female doctor Elizabeth Blackwell (1821), and writer Gertrude Stein (1874).
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, February 6, 2022 from 2022-02-03T09:00
Food and plant centered non-fiction writer, Michael Pollan, celebrates his 67th birthday today. He urges, “Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, February 2, 2022 from 2022-02-02T09:00:03
The author of “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce, was born on this day 140 years ago in Dublin 1882. One of his Parisian friends remarked, "He had not taste, only genius."
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, February 1, 2022 from 2022-02-01T09:00:03
Poet Langston Hughes was born on this day in 1902, 120 years ago. He said, “Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 31, 2022 from 2022-01-31T11:00:03
This day in 1923 Norman Mailer was born, author of “The Naked and the Dead,” “The Armies of the Night,” and “The Executioner’s Song.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, January 30, 2022 from 2022-01-30T09:00:02
Fifty years ago today British army parachutists shot 27 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland — an event known as "Bloody Sunday."
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, January 29, 2022 from 2022-01-29T09:00:01
It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was published in the New York Evening Mirror. Poe only earned $9 for the poem.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, January 28, 2022 from 2022-01-28T09:00:02
It’s the birthday of Collette (1873) who said, "Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, withou...
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, January 27, 2022 from 2022-01-27T09:00:03
This day in 1832 marked the birth of Lewis Carroll, best known as the author of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, January 26, 2022 from 2022-01-26T09:00:01
It's the 92nd birthday of Jules Feiffer, born in the Bronx (1929). His career as a satirist included being a cartoonist, novelist, and playwright.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, January 25, 2022 from 2022-01-25T09:00:02
Today we celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Adeline Virginia Stephen, better known as Virginia Woolf.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 24, 2022 from 2022-01-24T09:00:02
"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it."
--Edith Wharton, born on this day in New York City, 1862.
The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, January 23, 2022 from 2022-01-23T09:00:02
For every poet it is always morning in the world… the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History." -- poet Derek Walcott, born on this day 1930.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, January 22, 2022 from 2022-01-22T09:00:03
It was on this day in 1938 that Thornton Wilder's play “Our Town” was premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, January 21, 2022 from 2022-01-21T09:00:02
“I just try, like any writer, to be entertaining and interesting. I want people to get some pleasure and to learn something.”--Louis Menand (1952), American Critic and essayist.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, January 20, 2022 from 2022-01-20T09:00:03
Novelist Tami Hoag was born on this day, 1959. One good thing about being a writer, she said, is “I’m not obligated to look good on a daily basis.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, January 19, 2022 from 2022-01-19T09:00:02
Today is the 76th birthday of Dolly Parton, author of thousands of songs, an autobiography in 2021, as well as the children's book “Coat of Many Colors” (2019).
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, January 18, 2022 from 2022-01-18T09:00:02
It’s the birthday of A.A. Milne (1882), who created Winnie-the Pooh. The iconic “bear of very little brain” entered the public domain this year, 2022.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 17, 2022 from 2022-01-17T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of the youngest of the Brontë sisters, Anne Brontë. At age 29 she was the third of the four Bronte children to die of Tuberculosis.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, January 16, 2022 from 2022-01-16T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of three very different modern writers: food writer Ruth Reichl (1948), poet Mary Karr (1955), and activist Susan Sontag (1933).
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, January 15, 2022 from 2022-01-15T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929). He said, "If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, January 14, 2022 from 2022-01-14T09:00:02
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd celebrates her 70th birthday today. She said, "The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, January 13, 2022 from 2022-01-13T09:00:02
On this day in 1968 country musician, Johnny Cash recorded a live concert at Folsom Prison in California.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, January 12, 2022 from 2022-01-12T09:00:02
Myself, I'm a very realistic person. [...]But when I write, I write weird." --novelist Haruki Murakami, born on this day in Kyoto, Japan,1949.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, January 11, 2022 from 2022-01-11T09:00:02
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook" — psychologist and philosopher William James, born on this day 1842.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 10, 2022 from 2022-01-10T09:00:03
It's the birthday of Stephen Ambrose, who said of why he chose to become a historian “[It] occurred to me that I could add to the sum of the world's knowledge."
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, January 9, 2022 from 2022-01-09T09:00:02
"The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels." –Simone de Beauvoir, born this day in Paris, 1980.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, January 8, 2022 from 2022-01-08T09:00:02
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all." – Stephen Hawking, born on this day, 1942.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, January 7, 2022 from 2022-01-07T09:00:02
Africain American filmmaker, author, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama on this day in 1891. Author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, January 6, 2022 from 2022-01-06T09:00:02
“I write pieces, and move them around. And the fun of it is watching the truthful parts slide together. What is false won’t fit.” --Elizabeth Strout, novelist, born on this day in 1956.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, January 5, 2022 from 2022-01-05T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of literary and social activist Ngugi wa Thiong'o, born in Kenya, 1938. He writes in his native Kikuyu language to celebrate his heritage and protest Kenya’s use of English as...
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, January 4, 2022 from 2022-01-04T09:00:02
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin celebrates her 79th birthday today. About her work she has said, “As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped aro...
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 3, 2022 from 2022-01-03T09:00:01
"A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." said Herman Melville, author of “Moby Dick,” who went to sea on the whaler Acushnet on this day, 1841.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, January 2, 2022 from 2022-01-02T09:00:02
American Cartoonist Lynda Barry turns 65 today. And,it’s the birthday of author Isaac Asimov (1920) who has books in all 10 categories of the Dewey Decimal System.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, January 1, 2022 from 2022-01-01T09:00:02
New Years Day is the birthday of J.D. Salinger,born in New York City (1919), author of “The Catcher in the Rye” which has sold more than 60 million copies.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, December 31, 2021 from 2021-12-31T09:00:02
On New Years' Eve, 1879, Thomas Edison demonstrated the first incandescent light bulb for 3,000 spectators, who were awed and delighted with the invention.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, December 30, 2021 from 2021-12-30T09:00:02
Today is the 75th birthday of Patti Smith. Sometimes known as “the godmother of punk,” Smith is also the author of poetry collections, art, and memoir.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, December 29, 2021 from 2021-12-29T09:00:02
Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, resulting in the death of over 150 native Lakota Sioux people, including Chief Sitting Bull.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, December 28, 2021 from 2021-12-28T09:00:02
Comedian Sam Levenson was born on this day in New York, 1911. “It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, December 27, 2021 from 2021-12-27T09:00:02
James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” had its opening night on this day in 1904.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, December 26, 2021 from 2021-12-26T09:00:02
Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, also the birth of humorist David Sedaris (1956) whose latest book “A Carnival of Snackery” came out in October.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, December 25, 2021 from 2021-12-25T09:00:02
Christmas Day. Also the birthday of Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of William Wordsworth, whom we now know used some of his sister’s writings in his poems.
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, December 24, 2021 from 2021-12-24T09:00:02
For Christmas Eve we discuss the story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" by Damon Runyon.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, December 23, 2021 from 2021-12-23T09:00:02
It’s the birthday of Minnesota poet Robert Bly, who died just a month ago, Nov. 21st, a month shy of his 95th birthday. We feature his poem “The Call Away.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, December 22, 2021 from 2021-12-22T09:00:02
It's the birthday Kenneth Rexroth (1905). He published more than 50 books of poetry and once said, "Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust."
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, December 21, 2021 from 2021-12-21T09:00:02
Today in 1879, the world premiere of Henrik Ibsen's play “A Doll's House” took place at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, December 20, 2021 from 2021-12-20T09:00:02
“If it were denied me to write, I imagine I would die,” for through writing she makes sense of her own deepest experiences. --Elizabeth Benedict, born on this day in 1954.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, December 19, 2021 from 2021-12-19T11:00:01
It was on this day in 1843 that Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas." Introducing the world to Scrooge, Marley's Ghost, and Tiny Tim.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, December 18, 2021 from 2021-12-18T11:00:02
Methodist hymn writer Charles Wesley was born on this day, 1707, in Epworth England. His hymns include “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” and “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, December 17, 2021 from 2021-12-17T09:00:02
200 years ago Kentucky became the first state to abolish debtor's prison, where often people were imprisoned simply for being poor. Bankruptcy was set up to deal instead with unpayable debts.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, December 16, 2021 from 2021-12-16T09:00:02
Jane Austen was born on this day, 1775, in England. Author of "Pride and Prejudice", "Emma" and "Persuasion."
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, December 15, 2021 from 2021-12-15T09:00:02
230 years ago the Bill of Rights was ratified by the United States of America. These powerful statements were spearheaded by James Madison, later the 4th president of the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, December 14, 2021 from 2021-12-14T09:00:01
It was on this day in 1911 that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people ever to reach the South Pole.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, December 13, 2021 from 2021-12-13T09:00:02
"The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin." -- Heinrich Heine, born in Germany on this day in 1797.
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, December 12, 2021 from 2021-12-12T09:00:01
"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." -- Gustave Flaubert, born on this day in France, 1821. Best known for “Madame Bovary”
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, December 11, 2021 from 2021-12-11T09:00:02
“The best training is to read and write, no matter what…Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.” -- Grace Paley (born 1922).
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, December 10, 2021 from 2021-12-10T09:00:02
“Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops at all.” ― Emily Dickinson, born on this day in 1830.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, December 9, 2021 from 2021-12-09T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of poet John Milton (1608), author of the epic poem “Paradise Lost.” We feature Milton’s poem “On His Blindness.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, December 8, 2021 from 2021-12-08T09:00:02
The Roman lyric poet, and soldier, Horace was born on this day 65BCE He lived during the time of Caesar Augustus (Octavian), writing his Odes on many topics.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, December 7, 2021 from 2021-12-07T09:00:02
Willa Cather was born on this day, 1913. On writing, she said, “If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die…I make it an adventure every day.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, December 6, 2021 from 2021-12-06T09:00:02
It’s children's writer Susanna Moodie’s birthday today. Born 1903 in England, she wrote about frontier life in Canada, compared to the Little House books, but with the goal of discouraging English ...
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The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, December 5, 2021 from 2021-12-05T09:00:02
"Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone." – Joan Didion, born on this day in 1934.
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The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, December 4, 2021 from 2021-12-04T09:00:02
It's the birthday of mystery writer Cornell Woolrich (1903) whose stories were often adapted for radio and film, including “The Bride Wore Black” and “Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”
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The Writer's Almanac for Friday, December 3, 2021 from 2021-12-03T09:00:02
This day in 1947 the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
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The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, December 2, 2021 from 2021-12-02T09:00:02
“People like to ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes… but I can't teach you how to have something to say."—Ann Patchett, born on this day 1963.
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The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, December 1, 2021 from 2021-12-01T09:00:02
On this day in 1860 the first two chapters of Charles Dickens' novel “Great Expectations” were published.
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The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, November 30, 2021 from 2021-11-30T09:00:02
"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it"-- Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri on this day in 1835.
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The Writer's Almanac for Monday, November 29, 2021 from 2021-11-29T09:00:02
November 29th celebrates the birth of Madeleine L’Engle author of “A Wrinkle in Time,”and Louisa May Alcott author of “Little Women”, and C.S. Lewis, author of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 28, 2021 from 2021-11-28T09:00:02
It's the birthday of poet and artist William Blake, (1757). "Without minute neatness of execution, the sublime cannot exist! Grandeur of ideas is founded on precision of ideas."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 27, 2021 from 2021-11-27T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, (1701) who invented the Celsius temperature scale.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 26, 2021 from 2021-11-26T09:00:02
“The human situation is beautiful and strange. …The working of the mind is astonishing and beautiful.”-- Marilynne Robinson, born on this day,1943.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 25, 2021 from 2021-11-25T09:00:01
Happy Thanksgiving from The Writer’s Almanac! We feature the November poem “Murmuration” by Barbara Crooker.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 24, 2021 from 2021-11-24T09:00:07
“I am a teller of stories. For me, that’s the only way I can make sense of the world.”-- Arundhati Roy, Indian author and political activist born on this day in 1961.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 23, 2021 from 2021-11-23T09:00:05
On this date in the year 534 B.C.E., Thespis reportedly became the first Western actor to portray a character onstage. Prior to that theater was chorus based storytelling.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 22, 2021 from 2021-11-22T09:00:17
It’s the birthday of novelist George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evans in England (1819). She took a male pseudonym to be taken seriously as a writer.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 21, 2021 from 2021-11-21T09:00:15
Today is the birthday of playwright and philosopher Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet in Paris (1694).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 20, 2021 from 2021-11-20T09:00:16
Today is the birthday of astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889). He discovered that these distant galaxies were moving away from the Milky Way.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 19, 2021 from 2021-11-19T09:00:06
On this date in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 18, 2021 from 2021-11-18T09:00:07
Today is the 82nd birthday of poet, novelist, activist, and feminist Margaret Atwood, who said, "I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 17, 2021 from 2021-11-17T09:00:07
Today we feature the poem “As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods” by Walt Whitman.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 16, 2021 from 2021-11-16T09:00:08
Today is the birthday of the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel (1951). Author “How I Learned to Drive” and “The Baltimore Waltz.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 15, 2021 from 2021-11-15T09:00:17
“Each poem I think will be the last. But something always comes up and catches my fancy.” --Marianne Moore, born on this day in 1887.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 14, 2021 from 2021-11-14T09:00:17
It was on this day in 1851 that Moby-Dick was published. This historic work entered the public domain this year and begins with the words “Call me Ishmael.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 13, 2021 from 2021-11-13T09:00:17
It was on this day in 1789 that Ben Franklin wrote his famous phrase “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 12, 2021 from 2021-11-12T09:00:14
Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an author, speaker, and activist promoter of womens rights and sufferage.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 11, 2021 from 2021-11-11T09:00:04
Today is the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut (1922), author of many books including “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Jailbird,” and “Welcome to the Monkey House.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 from 2021-11-10T09:00:09
It was on this day in 1956 that American jazz singer Billie Holiday performed a legendary concert at Carnegie Hall after a three-year absence.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 from 2021-11-09T09:00:13
Poet Anne Sexton was born on this day in 1928. “The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that’s saying a lot.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 8, 2021 from 2021-11-08T09:00:03
"In a weak moment, I have written a book." said Margaret Mitchell of her epic novel “Gone With the Wind.” She was born on this day in 1937.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 7, 2021 from 2021-11-07T09:00:12
Today marks the birth of Canadian songstress and painter Joni Mitchell (1943), as well as of Polish physicist and chemist Marie Curie (1867).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 6, 2021 from 2021-11-06T08:00:02
It’s the birthday of poet Anne Porter (1911). She published her first collection, “An Altogether Different Language” in 1994 when she was 83 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 5, 2021 from 2021-11-05T08:00:04
“I do not remember when I did not expect to be a writer,” wrote Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American poet, born on this day in 1850.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 4, 2021 from 2021-11-04T08:00:13
Today is the birthday of Pulitzer Prize winning American poet C.K. Williams (1936) and of humorist, actor, and vaudeville performer Will Rogers (1879).
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 3, 2021 from 2021-11-03T08:00:10
The last public execution at London's Tyburn Gallows took place on this date in 1783. And 100 years later, 1883, the outlaw who called himself "Black Bart the poet" robbed his last stagecoach.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 2, 2021 from 2021-11-02T08:00:09
Today is the birthday of the ill fated, and much maligned, Queen of France Marie-Antoinette (1755) who lost her head to the French Revolution.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 1, 2021 from 2021-11-01T08:00:02
The first medical school for women opened in Boston, Massachusetts, on this date in 1848. It was started by Samuel Gregory who named it the Boston Female Medical College.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 31, 2021 from 2021-10-31T08:00:11
“My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.”-- Natalie Clifford Barney, an American writer born in 1876 who lived an openly lesbian life in Paris.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 30, 2021 from 2021-10-30T08:00:11
Today is the birthday of Ezra Pound (1885). He coined the term “imagism” for poetry which sought clarity of expression through the use of precise images.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 29, 2021 from 2021-10-29T08:00:09
Today is the birthday Harriet Powers (1937). Folk artist and quilt maker she was born into slavery outside Athens, Georgia (1837). Her quilts hang in the Smithsonian and the Museum of Fine Arts in ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 28, 2021 from 2021-10-28T08:00:14
It's the birthday of Dr. Jonas Salk (1914), inventor of the polio vaccine. Released in 1955, the number of people infected by polio declined from 10,000+ a year to less than 100.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 27, 2021 from 2021-10-27T08:00:04
Today is the birthday of poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) who said, "The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 from 2021-10-26T08:00:12
On this day in 1900 Henry James gave writing advice to Edith Wharton, then a young novelist. "Be tethered in native pastures, even if it reduces [you] to a back-yard in New York."
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The Writer's Amanac - Monday, October 25, 2021 from 2021-10-25T08:00:16
Novelist Anne Tyler celebrates her 80th year today. She is author of the Pulitzer Prize winning “Breathing Lessons,” and “Longlist,” winner of the Man Booker Prize.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 24, 2021 from 2021-10-24T08:00:16
"I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer." --Poet Denise Levertov, born this day in 1923.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 23, 2021 from 2021-10-23T08:00:09
Today is the 60th birthday of author Laurie Halse Anderson who writes books for children and young adults on challenging topics. Books such as “Speak” and “Chains”.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 22, 2021 from 2021-10-22T08:00:13
Today is the birthday of Doris Lessing, 1919. Lessing said "A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away…If you can imagine the sheer bloody pleasure of having an idea and taking it! I...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 21, 2021 from 2021-10-21T08:00:15
Today is the birthday of the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel (1833). Nobel, to prevent his legacy from being one of death, established the Nobel Prizes to celebrate humankind's greatest achievem...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 20, 2021 from 2021-10-20T08:00:12
“Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument." –Robert Pinsky (1940)
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 19, 2021 from 2021-10-19T08:00:18
"I have always written what I wanted to write. I have never considered the audience for one second. … Before publication, I am a despot."—Philip Pullman (1946)
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 18, 2021 from 2021-10-18T08:00:05
Today is the birthday of Chuck Berry (1926). The singer-songwriter broke into the charts in 1955 with “Maybellene,” and in 1958 “Johnny B. Goode.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 17, 2021 from 2021-10-17T08:00:14
Today is the birthday of Shinichi Suzuki (1898). He taught children to play violin by listening and imitating, the way they learn to speak. A method that now bears his name, Suzuki Violin Method.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 16, 2021 from 2021-10-16T08:00:07
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." -- Oscar Wilde, born on this day in 1854.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 15, 2021 from 2021-10-15T08:00:04
Novelist P.G. Wodehouse was born this day in 1881. Author of more than 100 books about Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 14, 2021 from 2021-10-14T08:00:06
It's the birthday of poet E.E. Cummings (1884), and for his birthday we feature the poem “All in green went my love riding.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 13, 2021 from 2021-10-13T08:00:03
Singer and songwriter Paul Simon celebrates his 80th birthday today. His first hit, with partner Art Garfunkel, was “The Sounds of Silence.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 12, 2021 from 2021-10-12T08:00:10
It was on this day in 1892 that the Pledge of Allegiance was recited en masse for the first time, by more than 2 million students.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 11, 2021 from 2021-10-11T08:00:07
"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do." – Eleanor Roosevelt, born October 11, 1884.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 10, 2021 from 2021-10-10T08:00:11
It's the birthday of playwright Harold Pinter (1930), whose use of dramatic pauses, noted in the text of his plays, has entered the dictionary as "Pinteresque."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 9, 2021 from 2021-10-09T08:00:11
John Lennon would have been 81 years old today. Songwriter of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Imagine,” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 8, 2021 from 2021-10-08T08:00:19
It’s the birthday of the creator of the “Fear Street” and “Goosebumps” books. That’s R.L. Stine, who turns 78 years old today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 7, 2021 from 2021-10-07T08:00:17
"It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between." Diane Ackerman. Celebrating her 73rd birthday today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 from 2021-10-06T08:00:17
California’s Redwood National Park was established on this day in 1968. These massive trees have this year been threatened by fires burning in California.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 from 2021-10-05T08:00:19
On this day in 1877 Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrendered to the US Cavalry, and uttered the famous words, “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 4, 2021 from 2021-10-04T08:00:07
It’s the birthday of Buster Keaton (1895). Born to vaudevillian parents, he became a deadpan and impressively physical comedian.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 3, 2021 from 2021-10-03T08:00:12
"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use." --Emily Post, born Emily Price on this day in Baltimor...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 2, 2021 from 2021-10-02T08:00:16
The comic "Peanuts" by Charles M. Schulz, which brought the world the iconic characters of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Lucy, was first published on this day in 1950.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 1, 2021 from 2021-10-01T08:00:13
Today is the 97th birthday of President Jimmy Carter who has written more than 2 dozen books and won the Nobel Peace prize in his post-presidential career.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 30, 2021 from 2021-09-30T08:00:13
It’s the birthday of W. S. Merwin (1927), whose poetry was called “luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory” by the Pulitzer Prize Committee.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 from 2021-09-29T08:00:07
The author of “Don Quixote,” Miguel de Cervantes, was born on this day in Alcalá de Henares (1547).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 from 2021-09-28T08:00:08
On this day in 1066 CE, William the Conqueror arrived on British soil. His rule brought the use of French at court and words such as mansion, beef, and royal entered the English language.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 27, 2021 from 2021-09-27T08:00:17
Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book “Silent Spring” was published on this date in 1962. It exposed the environmental effects of pesticides to a wide audience.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 26, 2021 from 2021-09-26T08:00:10
“True music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today.” --George Gershwin (1898)
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 25, 2021 from 2021-09-25T08:00:06
Forty years ago today Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as a justice in the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first woman to hold that office.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 24, 2021 from 2021-09-24T08:00:12
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on this day in 1896.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 23, 2021 from 2021-09-23T08:00:08
It's the birthday of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan born in Mongolia in 1215. The explorer Marco Polo’s journal contains most that is known about this ruler.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 22, 2021 from 2021-09-22T08:00:15
On this day in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It did not not free all slaves, only those within the confederacy.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 from 2021-09-21T08:00:02
Steven King celebrates his 74th birthday today. When asked why he writes, he said "The answer to that is fairly simple — there was nothing else I was made to do."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 20, 2021 from 2021-09-20T08:00:06
On this day in 1973 Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in a tennis match that was billed as the “Battle of the Sexes.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 19, 2021 from 2021-09-19T08:00:15
It was on this day in 1819 that 24-year-old John Keats wrote the ode "To Autumn."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 18, 2021 from 2021-09-18T08:00:19
On this day in 1870, the "Old Faithful" geyser in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming was discovered by the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 17, 2021 from 2021-09-17T08:00:11
Today is the birthday of poet William Carlos Williams (1883) who said, “A poem is a complete little universe.” We feature his poem “Pastoral.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 16, 2021 from 2021-09-16T08:00:09
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on this day in New York City (1924). She met Humphrey Bogart in the 1944 movie “To Have and Have Not” and later married him.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 15, 2021 from 2021-09-15T08:00:12
It’s the birthday of Agatha Christie (1890). In the World Wars she worked at a hospital dispensary; this gave her a knowledge of drugs that she later used in her murder mysteries.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 14, 2021 from 2021-09-14T08:00:02
"No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." – Margaret Sanger, born this day in 1879. Founder of Planned Parenthood.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 13, 2021 from 2021-09-13T08:00:16
"My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art."-- Clara Schumann, pianist and composer. Born Clara Wieck on this day in 1819.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 12, 2021 from 2021-09-12T08:00:08
Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, was born in Paris on this day 1897. Like her mother, she won a Nobel Prize for her work with radioactive elements, and like her mother, she d...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 11, 2021 from 2021-09-11T08:00:18
Twenty years ago 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes intending to crash them into New York's World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and The White House. Three out of four-hit their...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 10, 2021 from 2021-09-10T08:00:17
Poet Mary Oliver was born on this day 1935. “One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn’t be fancy.” She must have been right, as her poetry was consistently on t...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 9, 2021 from 2021-09-09T08:00:03
Today is the birthday of singer-songwriter Otis Redding (1941), known for soulful songs like “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” and “Try a Little Tenderness.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 8, 2021 from 2021-09-08T08:00:15
It was on this day in 1952 that Ernest Hemingway published “The Old Man and the Sea,” the last book published during his lifetime.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 7, 2021 from 2021-09-07T08:00:09
Anna Mary Robertson, the painter known as Grandma Moses, was born on this day 1860. Took up painting at age 77. Produced 115 paintings before her death at age 101.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 6, 2021 from 2021-09-06T08:00:14
Today is the birthday of Alice Sebold (1963), who gets up every day at 4 a.m. to write because, she says, “If you start in the dark, the judges are all asleep.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 5, 2021 from 2021-09-05T08:00:11
It was on this day in 1975 that Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a devoted follower of Charles Manson, pointed a loaded .45-caliber pistol at President Gerald Ford.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 4, 2021 from 2021-09-04T08:00:11
George Eastman received a patent for the first film camera, which he called Kodak, on this date in 1888. Later developing cellulose film, he eliminated the need for plates in photography.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 3, 2021 from 2021-09-03T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of the man who said, “Form follows function.” That’s American architect Louis Henry Sullivan, born in Boston (1856).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 2, 2021 from 2021-09-02T08:00:09
It was on this day in 1901 that Theodore Roosevelt uttered his famous words "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 1, 2021 from 2021-09-01T08:00:13
This day, 1773, Phillis Wheatley published “Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral,” the first book ever published by a former American slave.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 31, 2021 from 2021-08-31T08:00:12
Manga artist Yumiko Oshima was born on this day, 1947. A member of the Year 24 Flower Group, who revolutionized “shojo manga,” comics for girls.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 30, 2021 from 2021-08-30T08:00:14
"Satire is the weapon of the powerless against the powerful." –Molly Ivins, born on this day 1944.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 29, 2021 from 2021-08-29T08:00:14
Today is the birthday of Karen Hesse (1952). Published her first book “Wish on a Unicorn” at age 39 and won the 1998 Newbery Medal for her book “Out of the Dust.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 28, 2021 from 2021-08-28T08:00:08
It is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the restaurant Chez Paisse. Opened by Berkley alum Alice Waters, who has written over a dozen cookbooks.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 27, 2021 from 2021-08-27T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of the man Stephen King once called "the Swiss watchmaker of suspense novels," Ira Levin (1929). His novels include “The Stepford Wives” and “Rosemary's Baby.”
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The Writer's Almanac -Thursday, August 26, 2021 from 2021-08-26T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of the NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson (1918) who ran the calculations for the moon missions by hand.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 25, 2021 from 2021-08-25T08:00:13
Today is the 100th birthday of the Irish novelist Brian Moore, not well known, he was respected by authors such as Graham Greene. He also wrote screenplays for people like Alfred Hitchcock.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 24, 2021 from 2021-08-24T08:00:02
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, / Old Time is still a-flying, / And this same flower that smiles to-day / To-morrow will be dying.” --Robert Herrick, baptized this day 1591.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 23, 2021 from 2021-08-23T08:00:16
It's the birthday of the author who gave us "The Spoon River Anthology," Edgar Le Masters (1868). The work lost him friends in Spoon River, but earned him enough to live as a writer.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 22, 2021 from 2021-08-22T08:00:11
Today is the birthday of novelist Annie Proulx (1935), who won the Pulitzer Prize for her second novel, “The Shipping News” (1993).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 21, 2021 from 2021-08-21T08:00:15
“Poetry…answers to no one, it crosses borders without a passport, and it speaks the truth... it is one of the most powerful of the arts."-- Ellen Hinsey, born in 1960.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 20, 2021 from 2021-08-20T08:00:17
It was on this day in 1940 that Winston Churchill delivered a speech to the House of Commons with the famous line: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 19, 2021 from 2021-08-19T08:00:09
Today is the 100th birthday of Gene Roddenberry, most famous as the creator of “Star Trek,” the first sci-fi series to depict a generally peaceful future.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 from 2021-08-18T08:00:16
Vladimir Nabokov's “Lolita” was published in the United States on this day in 1958 and, in 1920, on this day the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 from 2021-08-17T08:00:08
“…the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world." –Ted Kooser, born on this day in 1930.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 16, 2021 from 2021-08-16T08:00:05
Today is the birthday of Charles Bukowski, born in Germany in 1920. His first rejection note read, “Possibly we will print you sometime, but I don’t know exactly when. That depends on you.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 15, 2021 from 2021-08-15T08:00:14
This day in 1969 the three-day concert known as Woodstock began. A beautiful weekend of music and togetherness in a time of societal anger and war.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 14, 2021 from 2021-08-14T08:00:14
It's the birthday of blockbuster best-selling romance novelist Danielle Steel (1947), who has written 185 books, 141 of which are novels.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 13, 2021 from 2021-08-13T08:00:18
It’s the 60th birthday of author Tom Perrotta, whose novel “The Leftovers,” a story of what happens to those left behind after the rapture, is also a successful television show.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 12, 2021 from 2021-08-12T08:00:12
Today is the birthday of investigative journalist Katherine Boo, 1984, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2000 for articles around abuse of the intellectually disabled.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 from 2021-08-11T08:00:17
"I have no fancy idea about poetry. It's not like embroidery or painting or silk. It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at." – Louise Bogan (1897)
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 10, 2021 from 2021-08-10T08:00:11
On this day in 1912 writer Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf in London. Their stable marriage enabled Virginia Woolf to flourish as a writer.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 9, 2021 from 2021-08-09T08:00:02
It is the birthday of science fiction author Daniel Keyes (1927). Keyes authored "Flowers for Algernon” which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1960.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 8, 2021 from 2021-08-08T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of American Novelist Valerie Sayers, 1952, whose advice to young writers is, "Have some fun. What the hell."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 7, 2021 from 2021-08-07T08:00:16
On this day in 1960 Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila became the first Black African to win an Olympic gold medal in any sport.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 6, 2021 from 2021-08-06T08:00:12
It’s the birthday of Sir Alexander Fleming, born in Scotland in 1881. He was a bacteriologist and discovered the antibacterial properties of penicillin.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 5, 2021 from 2021-08-05T08:00:06
It’s the 87th birthday of poet, novelist, and environmentalist Wendell Berry. He believes that art is not the most important thing in life, and you must keep it in perspective.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 from 2021-08-04T08:00:15
On this day in 1964 the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers were found in Mississippi. The murders influenced passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 from 2021-08-03T08:00:14
"Much of our lives involves the word 'no….But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing." –Marvin Bell, poet, born 1937.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 2, 2021 from 2021-08-02T08:00:25
On this day in 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not on the fourth of July as is popularly believed.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 1, 2021 from 2021-08-01T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of Maria Mitchell, born in 1818. A devoted anti-slavery activist and suffragette, she became the first acknowledged female astronomer.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 31, 2021 from 2021-07-31T08:00:05
Today is the birthday of poet Kim Addonizio, born in 1954. We feature her poem “High Desert, New Mexico.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 30, 2021 from 2021-07-30T08:00:02
Author of “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Brontë was born on this day, 1818
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 29, 2021 from 2021-07-29T08:00:10
Poet Stanley Kunitz was born on this day in 1905 in in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was appointed the poet laureate of the United States when he was 95 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 from 2021-07-28T08:00:13
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." – Karl Popper, born 1902
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 from 2021-07-27T08:00:19
"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read." –Hilaire Belloc, born 1870
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 26, 2021 from 2021-07-26T08:00:12
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That's the essence of inhumanity." –George Bernard Shaw, born 1856
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 25, 2021 from 2021-07-25T08:00:14
It was on this day in 1972 that Jean Heller of the Associated Press broke the news that the federal government had let hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama go untreated for syphilis for 40 years ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 24, 2021 from 2021-07-24T08:00:13
Poet Robert Graves was born on this day in 1895. He is well known as well for his historical novels, but always preferred poetry.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 23, 2021 from 2021-07-23T08:00:06
“Each one of you can change the world, for you are made of star stuff, and you are connected to the universe.” – Vera Rubin, American Astronomer. Born 1928.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 22, 2021 from 2021-07-22T08:00:13
Author of “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” and “Jitterbug Perfume,” Tom Robbins celebrates his 89th birthday today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 from 2021-07-21T08:00:12
"Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know” - Ernest Hemingway, born 1899.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 20, 2021 from 2021-07-20T08:00:07
The first Special Olympics were held in Chicago on this day in 1968. Organized by Eunice Kennedy Shriver and inspired by her love for her sister Rosemary, who was intellectually disabled.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 19, 2021 from 2021-07-19T08:00:05
On this date in 1799 French soldiers discovered the Rosetta Stone. Containing the same message in Ancient Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphics, it enabled deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 18, 2021 from 2021-07-18T08:00:21
Nadia Comaneci, the first gymnast to be given a “Perfect 10,” was born on this day in Romaina, 1976. She is the author of a memoir, “Letters to a Young Gymnast.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 17, 2021 from 2021-07-17T08:00:12
Comedian and actress Phyllis Diller was born on this day in 1917. She donated her jokes to the Smithsonian, more than 50,000 of them.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 16, 2021 from 2021-07-16T08:00:15
This day in 1862, Ida B Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi. She became a journalist and activist supporting women’s sufferage and exposing the lynchings of African Americans.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 15, 2021 from 2021-07-15T08:00:05
The first U.S. citizen to become a saint, Frances Xavier Cabrini, was born on this day in 1850 in Italy. She and her fellow Sisters aided the Italian immigrants of New York City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 14, 2021 from 2021-07-14T08:00:02
“Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.” – Woody Guthrie. Guthrie, an American troubadour, was born this day 1912.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 13, 2021 from 2021-07-13T08:00:11
Today we remember the birth in 1793 of the English Poet John Clare. A success in his own time, success could not save him from a life of madness.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 12, 2021 from 2021-07-12T08:00:09
Henry David Thoreau was born on this day in 1817. His classic work “Walden” was written while living on property owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 11, 2021 from 2021-07-11T08:00:08
The author of “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte's Web”, E.B. White, was born on this day 1899. He was also a prolific essayist and contributor to the New Yorker magazine.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 10, 2021 from 2021-07-10T08:00:08
It’s the 90th birthday of Alice Munro, a Canadian short-story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 9, 2021 from 2021-07-09T08:00:06
Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks was born on this day in 1933. He wrote about complicated medical mysteries of the brain to appeal beyond academia.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 8, 2021 from 2021-07-08T08:00:19
Today is the birthday of the columnist and best-selling novelist Anna Quindlen (1953), author of “How Reading Changed My Life” and “A Short Guide to a Happy Life.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 7, 2021 from 2021-07-07T08:00:20
Today is the birthday of American genetics pioneer Nettie Stevens (1861) who discovered that the combinations XX and XY in chromosomes determined the sex of an organism.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 6, 2021 from 2021-07-06T08:00:15
Louis Pasteur successfully tested his rabies vaccine on this day in 1885 on a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister who was bitten by a rabid dog.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 5, 2021 from 2021-07-05T08:00:17
“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work… then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.” -- Jean Cocteau, born 1889.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 4, 2021 from 2021-07-04T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804. Author of “The Scarlett Letter” one of the first mass-produced books in America.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 3, 2021 from 2021-07-03T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of Franz Kafka (1883), author of “The Metamorphosis” which reads “Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 2, 2021 from 2021-07-02T08:00:19
It was on this day in 1937 that pilot Amelia Earhart was last heard from, somewhere over the Pacific. Her last transmission was,"We are running north and south."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 1, 2021 from 2021-07-01T08:00:02
It’s the birthday of the “father of gospel music,” Thomas A. Dorsey, born in Villa
Rica, Georgia, in 1899.
The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 30, 2021 from 2021-06-30T08:00:05
Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz was born on this day in Lithuania, 1911. He once said, “Language is the only homeland.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 29, 2021 from 2021-06-29T08:00:07
Today in the year 1900 French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in France (1900). A pilot turned writer of the children’s novella, “Le Petit Prince.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 28, 2021 from 2021-06-28T08:00:10
In the early hours of this day in 1969 the Stonewall riots broke out in New York City, marking the beginning of the gay rights movement.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 27, 2021 from 2021-06-27T08:00:17
On this day in 1787 English historian Edward Gibbon completed the final volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 26, 2021 from 2021-06-26T08:00:15
It's the birthday of writer Pearl S. Buck (1892), Nobel Prize-winning author of “The Good Earth,” published 90 years ago.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 25, 2021 from 2021-06-25T08:00:20
Today would have been the 92nd birthday of Eric Carle, author of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and many other children’s books. He died May 23, 2021.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 24, 2021 from 2021-06-24T08:00:13
“I just went on writing it (English) because I always wanted to belong to this world of books."-- Anita Desai, novelist, born this day in 1937.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 23, 2021 from 2021-06-23T08:00:13
It's the birthday of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, 1889. Came to fame for the poems of her love affair, and later, after her son’s imprisonment, wrote a 10-poem cycle "Requiem."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 22, 2021 from 2021-06-22T08:00:15
Erich Maria Remarque , author of the anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front “ was born this day in 1898.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 21, 2021 from 2021-06-21T08:00:14
“Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.” -- French novelist and playwright Françoise Sagan, born this day in 1958.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 20, 2021 from 2021-06-20T08:00:03
On this day in 1893, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, about 50 miles south of Boston.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 19, 2021 from 2021-06-19T08:00:04
Today is Juneteenth, also known as "Freedom Day" or "Emancipation Day." It's a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 18, 2021 from 2021-06-18T08:00:17
On this day in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte met his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, in Belgium.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 17, 2021 from 2021-06-17T08:00:03
“99 percent of every beautiful thing you ever knew escaped and went back out into the world where you vaguely remembered it.”― Ron Padgett, born this day in 1942.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 16, 2021 from 2021-06-16T08:00:12
Today is "Bloomsday," the annual celebration of that 1904 day featured in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Named after protagonist Leopold Bloom, the book follows him during an ordinary day in Dublin.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 15, 2021 from 2021-06-15T08:00:09
It’s the birthday of one of the masters of the Japanese form of poetry called haiku, Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa (1736).
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 14, 2021 from 2021-06-14T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811), abolitionist author of “Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 13, 2021 from 2021-06-13T08:00:11
On this day in 1967 President Lyndon Johnson named the first African-American justice, Thurgood Marshall, to the Supreme Court.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 12, 2021 from 2021-06-12T08:00:16
"Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare." A quote by sociologist and writer Harriet Martineau, born this day in England, 1802.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 11, 2021 from 2021-06-11T08:00:14
Ben Jonson, author, playwright, friend of William Shakespeare, was born on this day in London, probably in 1572.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 10, 2021 from 2021-06-10T08:00:12
Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Saul Bellow was born on this day in 1913. “Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 9, 2021 from 2021-06-09T08:00:17
Today is the birthday of the man who wrote the songs "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," and "Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love": Cole Porter (1891).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 8, 2021 from 2021-06-08T08:00:11
It's the birthday of best-selling crime novelist Sara Paretsky (1947), who invented a smart, sexual, hard-boiled female detective, V.I. Warshawski, in her novel “Indemnity Only.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 7, 2021 from 2021-06-07T08:00:08
“Writers don’t write from experience … If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.” -- Nikki Giovanni (1943)
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 6, 2021 from 2021-06-06T08:00:06
Poet Maxine Kumin was born this day in 1925. She said, "Until the Women's Movement, it was commonplace to be told by an editor that he'd like to publish more of my poems, but he'd already published...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 5, 2021 from 2021-06-05T08:00:19
Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's Cabin” began its serial run in abolitionist newspaper the National Era on this date in 1851.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 4, 2021 from 2021-06-04T08:00:11
The Nineteenth Amendment was originally drafted by Susan B. Anthony. On June 4, 1919 it passed the Senate, sending it to the states for ratification. Fifteen months later it was ratified, giving Am...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 3, 2021 from 2021-06-03T08:00:03
"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does." -- Allen Ginsberg...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 2, 2021 from 2021-06-02T08:00:16
Novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was born on this day in 1840. A risky and bold writer, his works are said to have a “painterly” quality that lends them well to becoming films.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 from 2021-06-01T08:00:05
One hundred years ago today in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the thriving black neighborhood of Greenwood was destroyed, its population massacred by an angry white mob. No one was ever prosecuted.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 31, 2021 from 2021-05-31T08:00:06
This Memorial Day has us remember Walt Whitman on his birthday with a poem written for civil war soldiers and remembering Whitman’s service caring for them on the battlefield.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 30, 2021 from 2021-05-30T08:00:15
It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy in Rouen, France. A pesant girl, who heard the voice of god, and rose to lead an army.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 29, 2021 from 2021-05-29T08:00:02
"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations." – John F. Kennedy, born on this day in 1917.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 28, 2021 from 2021-05-28T08:00:06
“Youth is given. One must put it away/like a doll in a closet,/take it out and play with it only/on holidays.” May Swenson, born this day in 1913.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 27, 2021 from 2021-05-27T08:00:04
Today is the birthday of Julia Ward Howe (1819). A writer, a suffragist, and an abolitionist. Best known for the lyrics to “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 from 2021-05-26T08:00:09
Today marks 70 years since the birth of Sally Ride (1951-2012). The first American woman in space, who remembered space as “The most fun I will ever have in my life.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 from 2021-05-25T08:00:13
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, born this day in 1903.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 24, 2021 from 2021-05-24T08:00:13
It’s the 80th birthday of Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan. The Poet musician won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 23, 2021 from 2021-05-23T08:00:12
Today marks the birth of poet Jane Kenyon (1974). She said, “Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 22, 2021 from 2021-05-22T08:15:08
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” premiered on this day in 1967. The creation of Fred Rogers, a minister and puppeteer, who spoke to children of peace, patience, and diversity.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 21, 2021 from 2021-05-21T08:00:11
One hundred forty years ago Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross after caring for the wounded in the U.S. Civil War and recognizing the need for aid was more than government could provide.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 20, 2021 from 2021-05-20T08:15:20
Honoré de Balzac was born this day in 1799. A prolific novelist and playwright, he is recognized as one of the fathers of literary realism.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 19, 2021 from 2021-05-19T08:15:08
Today would have been the 80th birthday of Nora Ephron, author of classic movies such as When Harry Met Sally (1989), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). She said, “Above all, be the heroine of your l...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 18, 2021 from 2021-05-18T08:15:07
Today is the birthday of Tina Fey (1970) an actress and writer of humor for print, stage, and screen. She said in her book “Bossypants,” “Do your thing and don't care if they like it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 17, 2021 from 2021-05-17T08:15:09
Author Gary Paulsen is celebrating his 82nd birthday today. Author of “Hatchet” and “Dogsong” and other books mostly about coming of age and the wilderness.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 16, 2021 from 2021-05-16T08:00:09
"Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone." –Adrienne Rich, born May 16, 1929.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 15, 2021 from 2021-05-15T08:00:15
"The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my heart from one, another has come." –Emily Dickinson, died May 15, 1886.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 14, 2021 from 2021-05-14T08:00:14
“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning,” and “To love makes one solitary.” – quotes from “Mrs Dalloway” published May 14, 1925.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 13, 2021 from 2021-05-13T08:00:15
The first American colony, Jamestown, was founded on this day 1607 in the territory of the Powhatan Algonquian people.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 12, 2021 from 2021-05-12T08:00:17
“Writing, getting something down on the page, is a gratification that, like a child faced with a candy bar and an empty stomach, I have trouble postponing.” –Rosellen Brown, 1939
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 11, 2021 from 2021-05-11T08:00:20
It was on this day in the year 868 A.D. that the Diamond Sutra was printed. It is the world's oldest book bearing a specific date of publication.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 10, 2021 from 2021-05-10T08:00:05
It's the birthday of Suzan-Lori Parks (1963), the first African-American playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, for her play Topdog/Underdog in 2002.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 9, 2021 from 2021-05-09T08:00:09
It’s the 100th birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mona Van Duyn (1921). She said, "I believe that good poetry can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as a pottingshed, as long as it confron...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 8, 2021 from 2021-05-08T08:00:02
Poet and Zen practitioner Gary Snyder, was born in San Francisco on this day in 1930. His most recent book is one of essays, “The Practice of the Wild,” published in 2020.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 7, 2021 from 2021-05-07T08:00:10
Today is the birthday of Johannes Brahms (1833), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1876), and Robert Browning (1812).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 6, 2021 from 2021-05-06T08:00:08
On this day in 1935 Franklin Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration. The WPA employed 8.5 million out-of-work people on 1.4 million individual projects.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 5, 2021 from 2021-05-05T08:00:15
Nellie Bly was born May 5th, 1864. She reinvented investigative journalism with her exposé on life in a New York asylum, to which she got herself committed for ten days.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 4, 2021 from 2021-05-04T08:00:13
Horace Mann was born this day in 1796. An advocate of public education and an opponent of slavery, he said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 3, 2021 from 2021-05-03T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of poet, novelist, and memoirist May Sarton (1912). Her memoir “Journal of a Solitude” (1973) has been called “the watershed in women’s autobiography.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 2, 2021 from 2021-05-02T08:00:18
Almost 500 years later we’re still talking about her. On this day in 1536 Anne Boleyn was arrested and imprisoned for high treason, incest, and adultery.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 1, 2021 from 2021-05-01T08:00:17
The author of the novel “Catch-22” Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn on this day in 1923.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 30, 2021 from 2021-04-30T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of writer Annie Dillard (1945). She read voraciously as a child and has said, “I opened books like jars.” Her latest is “The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New” (2016).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 29, 2021 from 2021-04-29T08:00:15
American soldiers liberated 30,000 prisoners from a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany on this date in 1945. It was the first concentration camp the Nazis established.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 from 2021-04-28T08:00:09
Today marks the birth of Harper Lee in 1926. Her book “To Kill a Mockingbird” won the Pulitzer Prize and introduces many young people to the harsh realities of racism in America.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 27, 2021 from 2021-04-27T08:00:11
Playwright August Wilson was born on this day in 1945. For decades he brought black voices to the stage, and this past year his play “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was released as a film.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 26, 2021 from 2021-04-26T08:00:11
American performer Carol Burnett turns 88 today. Best known for her variety show “The Carol Burnett Show,” and to younger people as Ms. Hannigan from the musical “Annie.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 25, 2021 from 2021-04-25T08:00:04
Poet Ted Kooser turns 82 today. On why he started writing poetry as a teenager he said, “I was desperately interested in being interesting.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 24, 2021 from 2021-04-24T08:00:02
Author Anthony Trollope was born this day in London, 1815. On writing he said, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 23, 2021 from 2021-04-23T08:00:11
William Shakespere is believed to have been born on this day in 1564. He gave us the phrases "dead as a doornail," "come what may," "heart's content,” and "wild goose chase."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 22, 2021 from 2021-04-22T08:00:23
“Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you’ve no longer been bested by these events.”-- Louise Glück (1943
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 21, 2021 from 2021-04-21T08:00:13
Today is the 105th birthday of Charlotte Brontë, author of “Jane Eyre” and the last of the literary Brontë siblings to walk this earth.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 20, 2021 from 2021-04-20T08:00:18
Today we feature the poem “I Can’t Stop Loving You John Keats” by Kim Addonizio, from her new collection “Now We’re Getting Somewhere.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 19, 2021 from 2021-04-19T08:00:14
On this day in 1824, British poet Lord Byron died while fighting in the Greek War of Independence. A romantic poet, playboy, rogue, Byron’s spirit lives on in the poetic imagination.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 18, 2021 from 2021-04-18T08:00:02
It’s birthday of the man who inspired the word "beatnik," poet Bob Kaufman. A man who aspired to be forgotten and was frequently arrested for shouting his poetry in public.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 17, 2021 from 2021-04-17T08:00:07
According to legend, it was on this day in 1397 that Geoffrey Chaucer recited The Canterbury Tales to the court of Richard II.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 16, 2021 from 2021-04-16T08:00:21
Gertrude Chandler Warner, born this day in 1890, gave the world “The Boxcar Children,” a series that has continued to capture the imagination of children to this day
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 15, 2021 from 2021-04-15T08:00:15
Today we feature a poem by Barbara Quick, “Conjuring Nana.” A vision of childhood, memories of family.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 14, 2021 from 2021-04-14T08:00:12
Today is the birthday of Anne Sullivan (1866), who was the governess to Hellen Keller, teaching her to communicate.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 13, 2021 from 2021-04-13T08:00:14
One hundred fifteen years ago today the author Samuel Becket was born. His play Waiting for Godot changed the theatrical landscape.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 12, 2021 from 2021-04-12T08:00:11
Today we remember Beverly Cleary on what would have been her 105th birthday. She died just 18 days ago. Her legacy, bringing children books about regular kids, just like them.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 11, 2021 from 2021-04-11T08:00:12
Marguerite de Navarre was born in 1492. A writer of verse, prayers, plays, and religious meditations, she promoted the reformation from a privileged place, as sister to King François I of France.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 10, 2021 from 2021-04-10T08:00:16
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic “The Great Gatsby” was published on this day in 1925. This year it entered the public domain, joining Fitzgeralds' works “This Side of Paradise” and “The Beautiful and...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 9, 2021 from 2021-04-09T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of scientist Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903). He co-invented the first oral contraceptive pill with Dr. Min-Chueh Chang, work supported by activist Margaret Sanger.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 8, 2021 from 2021-04-08T08:00:17
“I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.”—Barbara Kingsolver, born this day in 1955.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 7, 2021 from 2021-04-07T08:00:12
Poet William Wordsworth was born on this day in England, 1770. We feature his poem “I Have Thoughts that Are Fed by the Sun” for his birthday.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 from 2021-04-06T08:00:17
Today is the birthday of musician Merle Haggard (1937) who gave the world 250 original songs, including “Mama Tried,” “Hungry Eyes,” and “Workin’ Man Blues.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 5, 2021 from 2021-04-05T08:00:17
Dr. Hattie Alexander was born in Baltimore (1901). An American pediatrician and microbiologist who developed the vaccine, known as Hib, to prevent influenzal meningitis.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 4, 2021 from 2021-04-04T08:00:12
This Easter marks the birthday of two American icons: poet, writer, and activist Maya Angelou (1928), and blues musician and songwriter Muddy Waters (1915).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 3, 2021 from 2021-04-03T08:00:09
Today is the birthday of author and illustrator Sandra Keith Boynton, 1953. She began her career writing greeting cards, developing her humor and the cohort of animals that populate her dozens of c...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 2, 2021 from 2021-04-02T08:00:13
Today is the birthday of Giacomo Casanova (1725). He wrote 12 volumes of autobiography, leaving posterity the best record we have of 18th-century society and its customs, and his own womanizing.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 1, 2021 from 2021-04-01T08:00:02
Anne McCaffrey was born on this day 1926. A pioneer for women in science fiction writing, she was the first female winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 31, 2021 from 2021-03-31T08:00:03
Today marks the 85th birthday of Marge Piercy. Author, feminist, and social activist, her latest work is one of poetry, “On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 from 2021-03-30T08:00:16
A friend of students and writers, the common pencils with attached eraser was patented this day 1858 by Hymen Lipman. A single pencil can write around 45,000 words.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 29, 2021 from 2021-03-29T08:00:07
It was on this day in 1944 that Anne Frank made the decision to rewrite her diary as an autobiography so that history might understand what the Jews of Europe had suffered.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 28, 2021 from 2021-03-28T08:00:21
“The Devil Wears Prada” author Lauren Weisberger celebrates her 44th birthday today. Her a seventh novel, “Where The Grass Is Green And The Girls Are Pretty,” will be released in May.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 27, 2021 from 2021-03-27T08:00:16
On this date in 1915, Mary Mallon, better known as "Typhoid Mary," was put into quarantine for the first time. A healthy carrier of the Salmonella typhi bacteria, her work as a cook caused multiple...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 26, 2021 from 2021-03-26T08:00:03
One hundred ten years ago today playwright and author Tennessee Williams was born, 1911. The conflict and pain of his life inspired his plays. He said, “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 25, 2021 from 2021-03-25T08:00:11
Author Flannery O’Connor was born on this day in 1925. A woman of strong opinions, her writing was equally fierce and frequently examined questions of morality through morally flawed characters.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 24, 2021 from 2021-03-24T08:00:02
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti died just a little over one month ago. Today he would have been 102. A poem, he said, “should arise to ecstasy somewhere between speech and song.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 23, 2021 from 2021-03-23T08:00:04
Today in 1877 writer Josef Čapek was born. Josef invented the word “robot” for a play he wrote about mass-produced human substitutes who are employed as cheap labor.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 22, 2021 from 2021-03-22T08:00:05
Billy Collins is 80 years old today! Friend and one-time host of The Writer’s Almanac, Billy has been producing The Poetry Broadcast videos on Facebook during the pandemic. He also released a new c...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 21, 2021 from 2021-03-21T08:00:03
Today is the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, born in Eisenach, Germany (1685). Known in his day not as a composer but as a skilled organist and repairer of organs.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 20, 2021 from 2021-03-20T08:00:20
“It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?” Written by Fred Rogers who was born this day in 1928.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 19, 2021 from 2021-03-19T08:00:16
One hundred years ago today adventurer, translator, and writer Richard Francis Burton, was born. His accomplishments include translating both “The Arabian Nights” and “The Kama Sutra."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 18, 2021 from 2021-03-18T08:00:07
“At the point where you get your writerly vocation you diminish your receptivity to experience. Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pa...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 17, 2021 from 2021-03-17T08:00:14
British fiction writer Dame Penelope Margaret Lively celebrates her 88th birthday today. Lively is the author of the children's book “The Ghost of Thomas Kempe”(1973) and the novel “Moon Tiger” (19...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 16, 2021 from 2021-03-16T08:00:07
“When I finish any project, it feels like a dream, and writing — whether it’s fiction or nonfiction — is very similar to dreaming.” --Alice Hoffman born on this day in 1952.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 15, 2021 from 2021-03-15T08:00:12
Ben Okri; Poet, Novelist, Artist, winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for “The Famished Road” celebrates his 62nd birthday today. His latest book is a poetry collection, “A Fire in My Head: Poems for t...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 14, 2021 from 2021-03-14T08:00:13
It’s the birthday of the Sylvia Beach (1887). She owned the bookstore Shakespeare and Company which became “the unofficial living room” of the expatriate artists living in Paris.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 13, 2021 from 2021-03-13T09:00:15
It was on this day in 1891 that Henrik Ibsen's play “Ghosts” opened on the London stage, a controversial play dealing with taboo subjects, which refuses the audience a happy ending.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 12, 2021 from 2021-03-12T09:00:06
“I’m only a jolly storyteller and have nothing to do with politics or schemes and my only plan is the old Chinese way of the Tao: Avoid the authorities.”-- Jack Kerouac, born this day 1922
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 11, 2021 from 2021-03-11T09:00:09
Today is the birthday of author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (1916). Unlike most children’s authors at the time, he celebrated city life. His first book was “The Snowy Day” (1962).
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 from 2021-03-10T09:00:20
Today we remember Harriet Tubman on the day of her death in 1913. Born into slavery, her birth is unknown. After escaping to freedom in 1849 she returned to help others with the journey.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 from 2021-03-09T09:00:08
"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?" -- Vita Sackville-West, born on this day in 1892
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 8, 2021 from 2021-03-08T09:00:19
Today is the 90th birthday of American writer John McPhee. He says when asked how he’s so prolific, “You know, you put an ounce in a bucket each day, you get a quart."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 7, 2021 from 2021-03-07T09:00:07
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep./But I have promises to keep,/And miles to go before I sleep,/And miles to go before I sleep.” By Robert Frost. Published on this day 1923.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 6, 2021 from 2021-03-06T09:00:14
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” How do we love poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Born in Durham, England, 215 years ago today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 5, 2021 from 2021-03-05T09:00:06
"The law has nothing to do with justice, and injustice can't be left unchallenged. So I decided to be a writer” – Leslie Marmon Silko, born this day in 1948
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 4, 2021 from 2021-03-04T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of author Khaled Hosseini, born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His breakout novel “The Kite Runner” sold over 1 million copies in 2 years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 3, 2021 from 2021-03-03T09:00:05
On this day in 1931 Francis Scott Key’s poem "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the official national anthem of the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 2, 2021 from 2021-03-02T09:00:05
“I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.” – Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904)
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 1, 2021 from 2021-03-01T09:00:14
On this date in 1872 Yellowstone became the first national park in the world. American author Wallace Stegner wrote: "National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely d...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 28, 2021 from 2021-02-28T09:00:05
On this date in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA after stealing the work of biophysicist Rosalind Franklin who had X-ray photographed the DNA molecule.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 27, 2021 from 2021-02-27T09:00:12
It's the birthday of the writer who said, "Truth disappears with the telling of it": Lawrence Durrell (1911). He is author of “The Alexandria Quartet” four books covering the same events from diffe...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 26, 2021 from 2021-02-26T09:00:17
The Grand Canyon was called by Teddy Roosevelt, “the one great sight which every American should see.” On this day in 1919 it was designated a National Park.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 25, 2021 from 2021-02-25T09:00:12
Today is the birthday of Anthony Burgess (1917). A writer of a great many things, he once said: “To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 from 2021-02-24T09:00:06
“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read — in such a moment, anything can happen.” –Jane Hirshfield, born in New York City on this day, 1953.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 from 2021-02-23T09:00:04
It was on this day in 1954 that the first inoculation of 137 children for polio began with the vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk. "Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 22, 2021 from 2021-02-22T09:00:16
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born this day in 1892. Her poem, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” is featured in honor of her birthday.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 21, 2021 from 2021-02-21T09:00:09
Today is the birthday of W.H. Auden (1907). “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 20, 2021 from 2021-02-20T09:00:14
It’s the birthday of Richard Matheson (1926), writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels and television. His work influenced and inspired writers such as Anne Rice and Stephen King.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 19, 2021 from 2021-02-19T09:00:18
“A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.” -- Stephen Dobyns, who celebrates his 80th birthday today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 18, 2021 from 2021-02-18T09:00:02
Today would have been the 90th birthday of Toni Morrison (1931), who published her first novel The Bluest Eye when she was 39 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 17, 2021 from 2021-02-17T09:00:03
“For a writer, the best way to speak is by writing. You will find everything I need to say in my works. Speech is carried off by the wind; the written word can never be obliterated.” –Mo Yan, born ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 16, 2021 from 2021-02-16T09:00:20
It’s the 281st birthday of printer Giambattista Bodoni, who designed over 300 typefaces. One of these, Bodoni, is found on most word processors today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 15, 2021 from 2021-02-15T09:00:03
Twenty years ago today a working draft of the human genome was published in the journal Nature. Two years later the Human Genome Project was completed and made available to the public.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 14, 2021 from 2021-02-14T09:00:16
On this day in 1895, Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” opened in London, in which two women find themselves in love with a man named Earnest.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 13, 2021 from 2021-02-13T09:00:15
American religious historian Elaine Pagels turns 78 today. Best known for her books about the Gnostic Gospels, 13 texts found in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 12, 2021 from 2021-02-12T09:00:11
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." --Abraham Lincoln, born this day 1809
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 11, 2021 from 2021-02-11T09:00:11
On this day in 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years of enprisonment by the apartheid government of South Africa. Four years later he was elected president.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 10, 2021 from 2021-02-10T09:00:20
175 years ago the Mormons headed west following Brigham Young to what would become their new home in what is now Salt Lake City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 9, 2021 from 2021-02-09T09:00:11
The author of “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker celebrates her 77th birthday on this day. She once wrote, "Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 8, 2021 from 2021-02-08T09:00:16
It’s the birthday of John Grisham (1955), who wrote his first best-seller, “The Firm,” using rules for suspense that he read about in a Writer’s Digest article.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 7, 2021 from 2021-02-07T09:15:14
It’s the birthday of Sinclair Lewis (1885), whose novel “Main Street” satirizing people in the Midwest caused a sensation. It made him a millionaire in 1920.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 6, 2021 from 2021-02-06T09:15:09
Today is the birthday of Mary Douglas Leakey (1913), who discovered fifteen new species of animal in her career as a paleoanthropologist.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 5, 2021 from 2021-02-05T09:15:17
It’s the 85th anniversary of the opening of the last film to feature Charlie Chaplin’s character The Little Tramp, “Modern Times”(1963).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 4, 2021 from 2021-02-04T09:15:13
This day marks the birth 100 years ago, and death 15 years ago, of Betty Friedan, women’s rights activist and author of “The Feminine Mystique.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 from 2021-02-03T09:15:03
This day marks the 200th birthday of the first woman to be granted a medical degree in the USA -- Elizabeth Blackwell, who crossed an ocean to become a doctor.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 2, 2021 from 2021-02-02T09:15:18
W.B. Yeats once said, “Never have I seen so much pretension with so little to show for it,” about a young Irish writer named James Joyce, born this day, 1882.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 1, 2021 from 2021-02-01T09:15:12
Meg Cabot was born on this day in 1967. She is the author of a series of books about a teenager who discovers she is a princess, “The Princess Diaries.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 31, 2021 from 2021-01-31T09:00:17
Today is the birthday of Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe, who has explored parental guilt and shame in several books influenced by his disabled son Hikari.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 30, 2021 from 2021-01-30T09:00:18
On this day in1972, British army parachutists shot 27 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland — an event known as "Bloody Sunday."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 29, 2021 from 2021-01-29T09:00:03
Today features a poem that brings us together in our current pandemic to those enduring one in the past, “Quarantine, 1918” by Faith Shearin.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 28, 2021 from 2021-01-28T09:00:04
“an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” –Collette, born in France on this day (1873).
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 from 2021-01-27T09:00:09
150 years ago a man named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born, better known as Lewis Carroll (1756). He gave us “Alice in Wonderland” and “Jabberwocky.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 from 2021-01-26T09:00:17
Today marks the birthday of Seán MacBride (1904) who was both a member of the IRA and the co-founder of Amnesty International, eventually winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 25, 2021 from 2021-01-25T09:00:18
It’s the birthday of the woman who sang “At Last,” “Tell Mama,” and “Something’s Got a Hold On Me.” Blues singer Etta James (1938).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 24, 2021 from 2021-01-24T09:00:06
“Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.” ― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth – Born this day 1862
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 23, 2021 from 2021-01-23T09:00:15
It’s the birthday of biochemist and pharmacologist Gertrude B. Elion (1918), who developed drugs to treat leukemia, malaria, herpes, and AIDS.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 22, 2021 from 2021-01-22T09:00:16
It’s the birthday of fiction writer Aryn Kyle (1978) who said “I try to remind myself that Emily Dickinson lived in an attic, which makes me feel well adjusted by comparison."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 21, 2021 from 2021-01-21T09:00:09
“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia.” –Vita Sackville West in a letter written to her lover Virginia Wolf from a train in Italy on this day in 1926.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 from 2021-01-20T09:00:12
Today is the birthday of Susan Vreeland (1946), whose novels merge her love of art and history with fiction.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 from 2021-01-19T09:00:17
Today is the 100th birthday of Patricia Highsmith, who is best known for her trilogy about the charming psychopath, Tom Ripley, and is also the author of “Strangers on a Train”, and “The Price of S...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 18, 2021 from 2021-01-18T09:00:20
A.A. Milne was born this day in London, 1882. A successful playwright in his life, his invention of Winnie the Pooh overtook his legacy and that of his son Christopher Robin.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 17, 2021 from 2021-01-17T09:00:03
“Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.” Michelle Obama, born this day 1964, from her memoir “Becoming.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 16, 2021 from 2021-01-16T09:00:09
“Camp asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste.” – Susan Sontag, born this day 1933
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 15, 2021 from 2021-01-15T09:00:13
It’s the 20 year anniversary of Wikipedia. A publically edited online encyclopedia that has articles on all kinds of things, including, “The Writer’s Almanac”.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 14, 2021 from 2021-01-14T09:00:06
It’s the birthday of author Anchee Min (1957). Born in Maoist China, she has said “To be able to do art, it was a luxury to me.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 13, 2021 from 2021-01-13T09:00:07
Johnny Cash recorded his concert at Folsom Prison on this day in 1968, a concept originating from his now classic song, “Folsom Prison Blues”.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 12, 2021 from 2021-01-12T09:00:16
It’s the birthday of James Winthrop (1588), who called the new world a “City on the Hill” but also emphasized that “the rich had a holy duty to look after the poor.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 11, 2021 from 2021-01-11T09:00:15
It’s the birthday of doctor and philosopher William James (1842), who coined the term “Pragmatism.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 10, 2021 from 2021-01-10T09:00:19
Today, for her birthday, we feature the poem “Against Endings” by Dorianne Laux. She advises, “Any good poem is asking you simply to slow down.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 9, 2021 from 2021-01-09T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of French novelist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908) who wrote “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 8, 2021 from 2021-01-08T09:00:08
It’s the birthday of physicist and author Stephen Hawking (1942) who beat the odds of life with ALS, surviving for 55 years and publishing more than 20 books.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 7, 2021 from 2021-01-07T09:00:07
Author Zora Neale Hurston was born on this day in 1891. Author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God," and "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.'”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 from 2021-01-06T09:00:09
“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” –Barry Lopez, (1945-2020)
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 from 2021-01-05T09:00:09
Today is the birthday of poet W.D. Snodgrass (1926). Inspired to write by the demise of his marriage, he helped invent the style of confessional poetry.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 4, 2021 from 2021-01-04T09:00:06
Today is the birthday of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943), who says of history, “Mostly it is for people who didn’t live through it.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 3, 2021 from 2021-01-03T09:00:13
It’s the birthday of the writer who created Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, and Gollum: J.R.R. Tolkien (Bloemfontein, South Africa, 1892).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 2, 2021 from 2021-01-02T09:00:17
"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised." – Antarctic explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 1, 2021 from 2021-01-01T09:00:06
The hymn "Amazing Grace" was first presented at a prayer meeting in Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, on this date in 1773.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 31, 2020 from 2020-12-31T09:00:04
Happy New Year's Eve! Today's episode consists of a poem by Hayden Saunier about a dog, a car, a truck, and a connection.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 30, 2020 from 2020-12-30T09:00:06
Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced the discovery of other galaxies beyond the Milky Way on this date in 1924.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 29, 2020 from 2020-12-29T09:00:15
Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota, 1890. The medicine man Black Elk said, "A people's dream died there."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 28, 2020 from 2020-12-28T09:00:12
It was on this day in 1895 that Auguste and Louis Lumière had the first commercial movie screening at the Grand Café in Paris. The film was 46 seconds long.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 27, 2020 from 2020-12-27T09:00:06
On this day in 1978, the country of Spain became a democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship. Headlines that day read, “Good morning, democracy.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 26, 2020 from 2020-12-26T09:00:07
Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" premiered at the Civic Theatre in Chicago on this date in 1944.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 25, 2020 from 2020-12-25T09:00:13
It was Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that revived Christmas after the Puritans had stamped out the old medieval Christmas in England.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 24, 2020 from 2020-12-24T09:00:16
On Christmas Eve of 1940, Jean-Paul Sartre’s first play was performed, in a German POW camp where he himself was a prisoner.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 23, 2020 from 2020-12-23T09:00:07
It’s the birthday of Robert Bly (Madison, MN, 1926), who for decades exchanged letters twice a week with his friend, fellow poet Donald Hall.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 22, 2020 from 2020-12-22T09:00:21
It's the birthday of the poet and translator Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), who mentored the Beat poets but became disillusioned as they turned into “hipsters.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 21, 2020 from 2020-12-21T09:00:10
400 years ago today the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, not in Virginia as intended, but in the lands of the Wampanoag people.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 20, 2020 from 2020-12-20T09:00:13
It’s the 66th birthday of Mexican-American writer Sandra Cisneros (Chicago, 1954), best known for "The House on Mango Street" (1984).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 19, 2020 from 2020-12-19T09:00:20
It's the birthday of French singer Édith Piaf (1915-1963), who was raised by prostitutes in a brothel before becoming an international star.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 18, 2020 from 2020-12-18T09:00:11
It's the birthday of Fletcher "Smack" Henderson (1897), a pianist who majored in chemistry and mathematics and became famous as a bandleader and arranger.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 17, 2020 from 2020-12-17T09:00:08
On this day in 1790, workers who were doing some repairs unearthed the Aztec Sun Stone in Mexico City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 from 2020-12-16T09:00:04
It is traditionally believed that Ludwig van Beethoven was born on this date in 1770. He grew up in Bonn and then traveled to Vienna to learn from Mozart.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 from 2020-12-15T09:00:02
"When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious." –Edna O'Brien
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 14, 2020 from 2020-12-14T09:00:17
It's the birthday of Shirley Jackson (1916-1965), author of "The Haunting of Hill House" and the short story "The Lottery."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 13, 2020 from 2020-12-13T09:00:19
It's the birthday of music critic Lester Bangs (1948-1982), who wrote, "The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 12, 2020 from 2020-12-12T09:00:02
It's the birthday of painter Edvard Munch, who said, "My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 11, 2020 from 2020-12-11T09:00:10
It's the birthday of two writers who were lifelong friends: Jim Harrison (1937-2016) and Thomas McGuane (b. 1939).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 10, 2020 from 2020-12-10T09:00:17
It's the birthday of English mathematician and inventor Ada Augusta Byron (AKA Ada Lovelace, born 1815), the first-ever computer programmer.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 from 2020-12-09T09:00:18
It's the birthday of Grace Hopper (1906-1992), who helped invent the modern computer and who helped design and promote a new computer language called COBOL.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 from 2020-12-08T09:00:12
It’s the birthday of English physician Doris Bell Collier (1897), who also wrote mystery novels, short stories, and radio plays under the pseudonym Josephine Bell.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 7, 2020 from 2020-12-07T09:00:08
On this day 60 years ago, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was created, declaring over 8 million acres to be federally protected from things like oil drilling.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 6, 2020 from 2020-12-06T09:00:18
The Washington Monument was finally completed on this date in 1884, thirty-six years after construction began.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 5, 2020 from 2020-12-05T09:00:09
It’s the 86th birthday of essayist, novelist, and memoirist Joan Didion (b. 1934), who wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 4, 2020 from 2020-12-04T09:00:08
It’s the birthday of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (Prague, 1875), a notorious seducer of rich noblewomen all over Europe.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 3, 2020 from 2020-12-03T09:00:11
It was on this day in 1947 that "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway. When the curtain went down, the audience applauded for 30 minutes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 from 2020-12-02T09:00:16
It’s the birthday of the artist Georges Seurat (Paris, 1859), whose technique of painting tiny dots of many colors became known as Pointillism.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 1, 2020 from 2020-12-01T09:00:17
It’s the birthday of “Madame Tussaud,” who sculpted her first wax statue, of the poet Voltaire, in 1777.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 30, 2020 from 2020-11-30T09:00:09
It's the birthday of Mark Twain (born Samuel Clemens), who said, "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 29, 2020 from 2020-11-29T09:00:14
It's the birthday of Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May), who founded a commune called Fruitlands and became a vegan before the term even existed.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 28, 2020 from 2020-11-28T09:00:14
The Grand Ole Opry, originally titled "WSM Barn Dance," began broadcasting from Nashville on this date 95 years ago.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 27, 2020 from 2020-11-27T09:00:09
Penn Station opened on this date in 1910. The original building was pink granite, with stately columns and a skylit interior modeled after a Roman bath.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 26, 2020 from 2020-11-26T09:00:02
Today is Thanksgiving, a day for being grateful and eating lots of food. With a poem by Jane Hirshfield about cooking.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 25, 2020 from 2020-11-25T09:00:08
It's the birthday of physician and essayist Lewis Thomas (1913-1993), who said, "The great secret of doctors...is that most things get better by themselves."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 24, 2020 from 2020-11-24T09:00:12
It’s the birthday of Arundhati Roy (1959), who wrote "The God of Small Things" (1997) all at once, no drafts, and it won the Man Booker Prize.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 23, 2020 from 2020-11-23T09:00:04
"We see you, see ourselves and know / That we must take the utmost care / And kindness in all things." –Joy Harjo
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 22, 2020 from 2020-11-22T09:00:15
It's the birthday of novelist George Eliot (1819-1880), who said, "My only desire is to know the truth, my only fear to cling to error."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 21, 2020 from 2020-11-21T09:00:11
The agreement known as the Dayton Accords was reached on this date 25 years ago to end the war and genocide in Bosnia.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 20, 2020 from 2020-11-20T09:00:08
On this day 200 years ago, a sperm whale attacked a whaling ship off the coast of South America. The story later inspired the book "Moby-Dick."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 19, 2020 from 2020-11-19T09:00:12
On this day in 1956, Ernest Hemingway recovered a trunk from the Hôtel Ritz Paris that contained the Paris-era journals that would become his memoir.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 18, 2020 from 2020-11-18T09:00:19
It's the birthday of American statistician George Gallup (1901-1984), whose name became synonymous with the opinion poll.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 from 2020-11-17T09:00:18
On this date 50 years ago, Douglas Engelbart received a patent for the first computer mouse. He never received any royalties.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 16, 2020 from 2020-11-16T09:00:05
It's the birthday of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), author of the worldwide hit "Things Fall Apart."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 15, 2020 from 2020-11-15T09:00:20
It was on this day 80 years ago that 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under the first peacetime conscription in American history.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 14, 2020 from 2020-11-14T09:00:13
It's the birthday of the painter Claude Monet (1840-1926), whose color palette shifted into muddy reds and yellows as he gradually lost his vision.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 13, 2020 from 2020-11-13T09:00:17
It's the birthday of St. Augustine, born in Tagaste, Numidia (354), a part of North Africa that is now Algeria.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 12, 2020 from 2020-11-12T09:00:10
It's the birthday of Roland Barthes (1915-1980), who applied sophisticated literary theory to things like movies, stripteases, toys, and wrestling matches.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 from 2020-11-11T09:00:13
It's the birthday of stand-up comedian Jonathan Winters (1925-2013), who said, "I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 from 2020-11-10T09:00:14
It was on this day in 1855 that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his poem "The Song of Hiawatha," which sold 30,000 copies in its first six months.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 9, 2020 from 2020-11-09T09:00:05
It's the anniversary of Kristallnacht (1938), which erupted after German Nazi Joseph Goebbels made a speech implicitly endorsing anti-Semitic violence.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 8, 2020 from 2020-11-08T09:00:17
It's the birthday of Kazuo Ishiguro (1954), whose novels include "An Artist of the Floating World" and "The Buried Giant."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 7, 2020 from 2020-11-07T09:00:04
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” –Marie Curie, born this day in Warsaw in 1867
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 6, 2020 from 2020-11-06T09:00:10
In 1860 on this day, Abraham Lincoln was elected president with less than 40 percent of the popular ballot, and not one single vote from 10 of the Southern states.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 5, 2020 from 2020-11-05T09:00:18
It's the birthday of one of the original muckrakers, Ida Tarbell (1857-1944), whose investigatory reporting brought down Standard Oil.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 from 2020-11-04T09:00:02
The Erie Canal was completed on this date in 1825. It was an engineering marvel that was once called the Eighth Wonder of the World.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 from 2020-11-03T09:00:12
"Without general elections, without unrestrained freedom of the press and assembly...life dies out in every public institution." –Marxist activist Rosa Luxemburg
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 2, 2020 from 2020-11-02T09:00:09
It's the birthday of the frontiersman Daniel Boone (1734-1820), who said, "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 1, 2020 from 2020-11-01T09:00:17
On this day in 1993, the European Union was formally established, with 28 countries choosing to join it and open their borders to trade and travel.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 31, 2020 from 2020-10-31T08:00:04
It's the baptism day of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), who only became well known outside of the Netherlands 200 years after his death.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 30, 2020 from 2020-10-30T08:00:12
It's the 85th birthday of biographer Robert Caro, who once said, “The power of the historian is the power of the truth, a very basic thing.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 29, 2020 from 2020-10-29T08:00:16
It's Harriet Powers Day in Athens, Georgia, named after one of the finest Southern quiltmakers of the 19th century.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 28, 2020 from 2020-10-28T08:00:02
It's the birthday of Dr. Jonas Salk, born in New York City (1914), who developed a polio vaccine at the height of a polio epidemic in the mid-1950s.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 27, 2020 from 2020-10-27T08:00:06
It's the 45th birthday of novelist Zadie Smith, who once said, "Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in the yard if you want to express yourself."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 26, 2020 from 2020-10-26T08:00:16
It's the birthday of the early American self-help writer Napoleon Hill (1883-1970), who wrote, "Do not wait: the time will never be 'just right.'"
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 25, 2020 from 2020-10-25T08:00:19
It's the 79th birthday of novelist Anne Tyler, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1941), who spent her childhood living on various communes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 24, 2020 from 2020-10-24T08:00:20
On this date in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act went into effect, establishing the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 23, 2020 from 2020-10-23T08:00:14
100 years ago today, Sinclair Lewis's novel "Main Street" was published. It nearly won the Pulitzer prize, but the award went to Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 22, 2020 from 2020-10-22T08:00:21
On this day in 1962, President Kennedy announced that Cuba would be placed under a naval “quarantine” until the Soviets removed missiles from the island.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 from 2020-10-21T08:00:15
It's the birthday of science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), who said, "if...lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 20, 2020 from 2020-10-20T08:00:17
It's the birthday of Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), considered the first true jazz composer because he was the first to write down his jazz tunes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 19, 2020 from 2020-10-19T08:00:03
Today is the anniversary of the surrender that ended the American Revolutionary War, in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 18, 2020 from 2020-10-18T08:00:06
It's the birthday of bestselling author Terry McMillan (1951), whose novels include "Waiting to Exhale" (1992) and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (1996).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 17, 2020 from 2020-10-17T08:00:14
On this day in 1933, Albert Einstein officially moved to the United States to teach at Princeton University after renouncing his German citizenship.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 16, 2020 from 2020-10-16T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), a devoted aesthete and one of the most quotable authors in the English language.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 15, 2020 from 2020-10-15T08:00:14
It's the birthday of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844), who wrote that God was like a star whose light we can see, even though the star died long ago.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 14, 2020 from 2020-10-14T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of poet and playwright e e cummings (1894-1962), about whom a critic once asked, “What is wrong with a man who writes like this?”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 13, 2020 from 2020-10-13T08:00:02
It's the birthday of Harlem Renaissance writer Arnaud "Arna" Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973), who also preserved and anthologized African American literature.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 12, 2020 from 2020-10-12T08:00:18
On this day in 1823, Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh sold the first raincoat. They are still sometimes called "macs" in Great Britain.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 11, 2020 from 2020-10-11T08:00:08
"Saturday Night Live" premiered on this day in 1975, with George Carlin as host and Andy Kaufman and the Muppets as special guests.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 10, 2020 from 2020-10-10T08:00:10
It's the birthday of singer-songwriter John Prine (1946), who died of complications stemming from COVID-19 earlier this year.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 9, 2020 from 2020-10-09T08:00:11
It's the birthday of writer Belva Plain (1915-2010), whose first book, "Evergreen," stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for 61 weeks.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 8, 2020 from 2020-10-08T08:00:14
100 years ago today, the science fiction author Frank Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington. He is best known for "Dune" (1965) and its sequels.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 7, 2020 from 2020-10-07T08:00:09
It's the birthday of poet and author Diane Ackerman (1948), who is known for her wide-ranging works that blend science and literary art.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 6, 2020 from 2020-10-06T08:00:08
200 years ago today, Jenny Lind was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She is considered to be one of the most gifted sopranos ever.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 5, 2020 from 2020-10-05T08:00:04
It's the birthday of Czech activist-turned-president Václav Havel (1936-2011), who said, "The solution to the situation does not lie in leaving it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 4, 2020 from 2020-10-04T08:00:19
On this date in 1535, the first complete modern English translation of the Bible was compiled and printed by Myles Coverdale.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 3, 2020 from 2020-10-03T08:00:21
It's the birthday of Emily Post (1873), who said, "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 2, 2020 from 2020-10-02T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of Nat Turner (Virginia, 1800), who led one of the most famous and effective slave revolts in the Americas in 1831.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 1, 2020 from 2020-10-01T08:00:12
It's the birthday of Jimmy Carter (1924), who said, “A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 30, 2020 from 2020-09-30T08:00:02
It's the birthday of W.S. Merwin (1927-2019), who asked that his Pulitzer Prize money be given to a painter who was blinded by police in a 1969 Berkeley protest.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 29, 2020 from 2020-09-29T08:00:16
It's the birthday of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), who said, "I do not see why the public have any more to do with me than buy or reject the ware I supply to them.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 28, 2020 from 2020-09-28T08:00:16
On this date in 1918, a parade to sell war bonds resulted in an epidemic of the "Spanish flu" that caused mass death in Philadelphia.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 27, 2020 from 2020-09-27T08:00:14
It's the 75th birthday of Kay Ryan (1945), who said, "Poems should leave you feeling freer and not more burdened."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 26, 2020 from 2020-09-26T08:00:17
It's the birthday of composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), whose piece “An American in Paris” featured accompaniment written for taxi horns.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 25, 2020 from 2020-09-25T08:00:19
On this day in 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first female Supreme Court justice, appointed by President Reagan.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 24, 2020 from 2020-09-24T08:00:14
It's the birthday of Irish poet Eavan Boland (1944-2020). She said, "Poetry is one of the most fugitive arts...therefore the most likely to survive colonization."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 2020-09-23T08:00:04
It's the birthday of Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927), who ran for president in 1872 on a platform including women’s suffrage and nationalization of railroads.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 22, 2020 from 2020-09-22T08:00:16
On this day in 1862, President Lincoln signed his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, stating any slave in the Confederacy would be free January 1st.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 21, 2020 from 2020-09-21T08:00:16
It's the birthday of H.G. Wells (1866-1946), author of science fiction books such as "The Time Machine" and "The War of the Worlds."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 20, 2020 from 2020-09-20T08:00:10
It's the birthday of George R.R. Martin (1948), author of the series "A Song of Ice and Fire" which was turned into the HBO show "Game of Thrones."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 19, 2020 from 2020-09-19T08:00:18
On this date in 1940, Polish soldier Witold Pilecki allowed himself to be captured by the Nazis so he could find out what was happening at Auschwitz.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 18, 2020 from 2020-09-18T08:00:08
It's the birthday of Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo (1905-1990), who made 28 movies before retiring at the age of 35.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 17, 2020 from 2020-09-17T08:00:07
On this date in 1683, Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society, sharing his discovery of "animalcules," or bacteria.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 from 2020-09-16T08:00:18
It’s the 70th birthday of Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1950), the scholar, literary critic, historian, and host of PBS's "Finding Your Roots."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 from 2020-09-15T08:00:20
On this date in 1963, a bomb killed four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The FBI suppressed evidence against the suspected bomber.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 14, 2020 from 2020-09-14T08:00:20
On this day 700 years ago, the author Dante died from malaria, just months after completing the third and final part of his "Divine Comedy."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 13, 2020 from 2020-09-13T08:00:12
It's the birthday of the pianist and composer Clara Schumann (1819-1896), who was much more popular than her husband Robert Schumann during their lifetime.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 12, 2020 from 2020-09-12T08:00:15
It's the birthday of H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), who once called Arkansas “an apex of moronia,” and the legislature there passed a motion to pray for his soul.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 11, 2020 from 2020-09-11T08:00:19
Featuring a poem by Jane Hirshfield called “Now A Darkness is Coming," from her newest poetry collection, "Ledger."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 10, 2020 from 2020-09-10T08:00:10
It's the birthday of the poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), whose partner, Molly, used to impersonate her on the phone so that Mary wouldn't have to talk to strangers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 from 2020-09-09T08:00:11
On this day 170 years ago, California became a U.S. state after being wrested from Mexico. It was the 31st state admitted to the Union, just before Minnesota.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 8, 2020 from 2020-09-08T08:00:14
It was on this day 100 years ago that the first transcontinental U.S. airmail service began, from New York to San Francisco.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 7, 2020 from 2020-09-07T08:00:04
On this day in 2008, the U.S. government took control of the two largest mortgage lenders in the country, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 6, 2020 from 2020-09-06T08:00:04
Using the Old Style calendar, it was on this day 400 years ago that the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 5, 2020 from 2020-09-05T08:00:12
The classic novel,"On The Road" was published on this day in 1957. Jack Kerouac based his novel on road trips with his friend Neal Cassady.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 4, 2020 from 2020-09-04T08:00:13
It's the birthday of novelist Richard Wright, author of "Native Son" (1940), who said, "All literature is protest. You can’t name a single novel that isn’t protest.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 3, 2020 from 2020-09-03T08:00:17
It's the birthday of war correspondent Marguerite Higgins (1920-1966), who fought for her right to cover the Korean War and who died while covering Vietnam.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 from 2020-09-02T08:00:09
It’s the birthday of Albert Goodwill Spalding (1850), a baseball player and a founder of the sporting goods company A.G. Spalding and Brothers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 from 2020-09-01T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875), who wrote "Tarzan of the Apes" and who bought a section of Los Angeles that's now known as Tarzana.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 31, 2020 from 2020-08-31T08:00:11
It's the birthday of pioneering educator Maria Montessori (1870-1952), who emphasized independence, self-directed learning, and learning from peers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 30, 2020 from 2020-08-30T08:00:14
It was on this day in 30 B.C. that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake rather than remain the prisoner of Octavian.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 29, 2020 from 2020-08-29T08:00:04
It was on this day 15 years ago that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast near New Orleans. More than 80% of the city was eventually flooded.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 28, 2020 from 2020-08-28T08:00:19
On this day in 1963, more than 200,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 27, 2020 from 2020-08-27T08:00:05
It's the birthday of philosopher Georg Hegel (1770), whose concept of dialectic posited that all human progress is driven by the conflict between opposites.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 from 2020-08-26T08:00:16
On this date in 1873, the St. Louis, Missouri, school board authorized the first public kindergarten in the United States, thanks to Susan Blow's activism.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 from 2020-08-25T08:00:04
"Without language there is no poetry, without poetry there’s just talk. Talk is cheap and proves nothing." –Charles Wright, former U.S. Poet Laureate
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 24, 2020 from 2020-08-24T08:00:03
It was on this day in the year 410 that Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. It was the first time in 800 years that Rome was successfully invaded.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 23, 2020 from 2020-08-23T08:00:16
It was on this day in 1939 that the governments of Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, shocking many American communists.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 22, 2020 from 2020-08-22T08:00:16
It's the birthday of the witty Dorothy Parker (1893), who was kicked out of various institutions for offending people, and who left her estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 21, 2020 from 2020-08-21T08:00:15
It's the birthday of author Ellen Hinsey (1960), who said, "poetry is an independent ambassador for conscience: It answers to no one."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 20, 2020 from 2020-08-20T08:00:29
On this day 80 years ago, Winston Churchill said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 19, 2020 from 2020-08-19T08:00:15
It's the birthday of Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991), who created the sci-fi franchise Star Trek, which was unique in that it imagined a generally peaceful future.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 18, 2020 from 2020-08-18T08:00:18
It's the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which stated that U.S. citizens' right to vote could not be "denied or abridged...on account of sex."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 17, 2020 from 2020-08-17T08:00:04
It's the birthday of American folk hero Davy Crockett (1786), who served in the Tennessee state legislature and died in the Battle of the Alamo.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 16, 2020 from 2020-08-16T08:00:13
It's the birthday of English philosopher and playwright Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679), who taught herself to read and write when she was a child.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 15, 2020 from 2020-08-15T08:00:06
It's the birthday of essayist Thomas de Quincey (Manchester, England, 1785), who arguably invented the "drug memoir" genre.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 14, 2020 from 2020-08-14T08:00:04
It's the birthday of cartoonist Gary Larson (1950), who created the popular single-panel comic "The Far Side."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 13, 2020 from 2020-08-13T08:00:02
The Lebanese-born Dr. Michael Shadid established the first cooperatively owned and operated hospital in the United States on this date in 1931.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 12, 2020 from 2020-08-12T08:00:21
It's the birthday of Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote: "O beautiful for spacious skies, / For amber waves of grain, / For purple mountain majesties / Above the fruited plain!"
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 from 2020-08-11T08:00:15
It's the birthday of Alex Haley (1921-1992), who wrote both "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (1965) and "Roots" (1976).
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 10, 2020 from 2020-08-10T08:00:11
It's the birthday of Joyce Sutphen, Poet Laureate of Minnesota, whose poem "Happiness" we are featuring today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 9, 2020 from 2020-08-09T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of author P.L. Travers (1899-1996), who described her popular Mary Poppins series as “both a joy and a curse.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 8, 2020 from 2020-08-08T08:00:03
The first refrigerator was patented in the United States on this date in 1899. The company Frigidaire was founded 19 years later.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 7, 2020 from 2020-08-07T08:00:06
Today’s episode features a poem by Galway Kinnell, called “Wait,” promising that “Personal events will become interesting again.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 6, 2020 from 2020-08-06T08:00:14
75 years ago today, in 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 80,000 people on impact.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 5, 2020 from 2020-08-05T08:00:09
The comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" on this day in 1924. Creator Harold Gray was staunchly anti-FDR, but the musical version intentionally subverted his politics.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 4, 2020 from 2020-08-04T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of pioneering jazz musician Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), who said, “Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doing to it.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 3, 2020 from 2020-08-03T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of British crime novelist P.D. James (1920-2014), who had a seat in the House of Lords and also worked as a local magistrate.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 2, 2020 from 2020-08-02T08:00:20
It's the 78th birthday of Isabel Allende (1942), who once got fired for translating romance novels too liberally, adding depth and independence to the women characters.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 1, 2020 from 2020-08-01T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of the astronomer Maria Mitchell (1818), who made the first American comet sighting and who was the first female faculty member of Vassar College.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 31, 2020 from 2020-07-31T08:00:09
It's the birthday of poet and novelist Kim Addonizio (1954), who said, "Poetry is not a means to an end, but a continuing engagement with being alive."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 30, 2020 from 2020-07-30T08:00:11
On this day 55 years ago, Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965, creating Medicare and Medicaid.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 29, 2020 from 2020-07-29T08:00:15
The painter Vincent van Gogh died on this date 130 years ago. World-famous now, he was virtually unknown at the time of his death.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 from 2020-07-28T08:00:17
It’s the birthday of Earl Tupper (1907), who worked with plastics at the DuPont Chemical Company and then invented Tupperware.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 27, 2020 from 2020-07-27T08:00:17
It’s the birthday of novelist Bharati Mukherjee (1940-1917), who wrote “The Tiger's Daughter” (1971), “Jasmine” (1989), and “Miss New India” (2011).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 26, 2020 from 2020-07-26T08:00:06
It’s the birthday of psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875), who believed that archetypes from cultural stories come from a collective unconscious that all humans share.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 25, 2020 from 2020-07-25T08:00:04
It's the birthday of Louise Brown, the first baby conceived via in vitro insemination and born in Oldham, Great Britain, in 1978.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 24, 2020 from 2020-07-24T08:00:07
It’s the birthday hymn writer John Newton (1725), a trader of African slaves who later became a vocal abolitionist. He wrote the song “Amazing Grace.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 23, 2020 from 2020-07-23T08:00:18
On this night in 1967, an uprising began in Detroit after an all-white squadron of police officers decided to raid a bar in a black neighborhood.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 from 2020-07-22T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of poet Emma Lazarus (New York, 1849), who wrote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 from 2020-07-21T08:00:02
“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” –Ernest Hemingway, born this day in 1899
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 20, 2020 from 2020-07-20T08:00:17
On this day in 1875, that the largest recorded swarm of locusts in American history descended upon the Great Plains.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 19, 2020 from 2020-07-19T08:00:06
On this date in 1848, the first Convention for Women's Rights opened in Seneca Falls, New York. Speakers included Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 18, 2020 from 2020-07-18T08:00:15
On this day in 1877, inventor Thomas Edison recorded the human voice for the first time at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 17, 2020 from 2020-07-17T08:00:14
It was on this day in 1936 that the Spanish Civil War began with an attempted coup by right-wing forces (Nationalists) against the government (Republicans).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 16, 2020 from 2020-07-16T08:00:17
J.D. Salinger's “The Catcher in the Rye” was published on this date in 1951. It was turned down by publisher Harcourt, Brace and landed at Little, Brown instead.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 from 2020-07-15T08:00:20
It's the birthday of novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), who won the Booker Prize in 1978 for “The Sea, the Sea.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 14, 2020 from 2020-07-14T08:00:11
On this date in 1881, Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in New Mexico Territory. He was 22 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 13, 2020 from 2020-07-13T08:00:04
"The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” –Nigerian playwright Wole Soynika, born this day in 1934
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 12, 2020 from 2020-07-12T08:00:08
“All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are." –poet & diplomat Pablo Neruda, born this day in 1904
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 11, 2020 from 2020-07-11T08:00:04
“To Kill a Mockingbird” was published on this date 60 years ago. Harper Lee said, “I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 10, 2020 from 2020-07-10T08:00:07
It's the birthday of inventor Nikola Tesla (Austria-Hungary, 1856), who sailed to America with four cents, plans for a flying machine, and a few of his poems.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 9, 2020 from 2020-07-09T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), who explored phenomena of the brain in books like “Musicophilia” and “Seeing Voices.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 8, 2020 from 2020-07-08T08:00:09
It’s the birthday of psychiatrist and writer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Switzerland, 1926-2004), who famously outlined the five stages of grief.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 7, 2020 from 2020-07-07T08:00:02
It’s the birthday of American biologist Nettie Stevens (1861-1912), who made the pioneering discovery of sex chromosomes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 6, 2020 from 2020-07-06T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), who said, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 5, 2020 from 2020-07-05T08:00:12
The Battle of Osan took place on this date 70 years ago. It was the first face-off of American and North Korean troops in the Korean War.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 4, 2020 from 2020-07-04T08:00:11
On this day in 1855, Walt Whitman published the first edition of “Leaves of Grass.” It was met with glowing reviews, many penned by Whitman himself.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 3, 2020 from 2020-07-03T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who said, “a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 2, 2020 from 2020-07-02T08:00:06
It’s the birthday of civil rights activist, lawyer, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908), who sat on the Supreme Court from 1967 to 1991.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 from 2020-07-01T08:00:15
It's the birthday of French novelist George Sand, born Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804), who originally wanted to be a nun, but her grandmother wouldn’t let her.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 from 2020-06-30T08:00:14
On this day in 1860, a heated debate on the merits of the theory of evolution took place at Oxford University. “The Origin of Species” had been published 7 months earlier.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 29, 2020 from 2020-06-29T08:00:13
"All grown-ups were once children — although few of them remember it.” –the children’s author and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born this day in 1900
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 28, 2020 from 2020-06-28T08:00:09
In the early hours of this day in 1969, the Stonewall uprising broke out in New York City, marking the beginning of the LGBTQ rights movement.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 27, 2020 from 2020-06-27T08:00:12
It's the birthday of poet Lucille Clifton (1936-2010), whose career choice was inspired by the fact that her father so disapproved of her mother writing poetry.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 26, 2020 from 2020-06-26T08:00:09
On this day 20 years ago, scientific teams completed the first rough map of the human genome. One finding: the human species goes back 7,000 generations.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 25, 2020 from 2020-06-25T08:00:06
70 years ago today, North Korea invaded South Korea. The Korean War became the first war that the United States concluded without success.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 from 2020-06-24T08:00:11
It was on this day in 1374 in Aachen, Germany that an outbreak of dancing plague or dancing mania, also known as St. Vitus’ Dance, first began.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 23, 2020 from 2020-06-23T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova (1889), who spent 30 years writing her poem “Requiem” in pieces so that Stalin’s regime would not discover it.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 22, 2020 from 2020-06-22T08:00:09
It's the birthday of Erich Maria Remarque (Germany, 1898), who is best known for his anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 21, 2020 from 2020-06-21T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of French existentialist and writer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905), who said, “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 20, 2020 from 2020-06-20T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of writer and activist Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858), the first black fiction writer to have his work published in The Atlantic magazine.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 19, 2020 from 2020-06-19T08:00:08
Today is Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. It’s also the anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act (1964).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 18, 2020 from 2020-06-18T08:00:04
On this day in 1983, Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She said, “I’m sure it was the most fun I’ll ever have in my life.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 from 2020-06-17T08:00:12
Today is the birthday of poet, essayist, and translator Ron Padgett (1942), whose poetry has been featured many times on the Almanac.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 from 2020-06-16T08:00:17
It’s the birthday of the Apache leader Geronimo (1829), who died in 1909 as a prisoner of war in a military hospital in Oklahoma City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 15, 2020 from 2020-06-15T08:00:04
100 years ago today, three young black men were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota after being wrongfully accused of raping a white woman.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 14, 2020 from 2020-06-14T08:00:19
It’s the birthday of photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White (1904), who broke gender barriers and who was nicknamed “Maggie the Indestructible” at Life magazine.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 13, 2020 from 2020-06-13T08:00:16
On this day in 1966, the historic Miranda v. Arizona case was decided, giving rise to the requirement for police to read suspects their “Miranda rights” when arresting them.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 12, 2020 from 2020-06-12T08:00:08
On this day in 1963, civil rights leader and World War Two veteran Medgar Evers was murdered by a Ku Klux Klan member. The KKK member was found guilty 31 years later.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 11, 2020 from 2020-06-11T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of playwright Ben Jonson (1572), a contemporary of Shakespeare whose mischievous writings and behaviors nearly got him executed multiple times.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 10, 2020 from 2020-06-10T08:00:02
It’s the birthday of Saul Bellow (1915), who grew up in Chicago as an undocumented immigrant and who said, "in expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 9, 2020 from 2020-06-09T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of Cole Porter (1891), who wrote hundreds of songs for movies, television, and Broadway shows including the song "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 8, 2020 from 2020-06-08T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), who designed buildings that complemented, or even seemed part of, nature.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 7, 2020 from 2020-06-07T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of novelist Louise Erdrich (1954), who said, “The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 6, 2020 from 2020-06-06T08:00:13
It was on this day in 1933 that the first drive-in movie theater opened, in Camden, New Jersey, bringing a little fun to the tough daily life of the Depression era.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 5, 2020 from 2020-06-05T08:00:11
On this day in 1851, the first words of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe were published, spreading the abolitionist cause to a newly receptive public.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 4, 2020 from 2020-06-04T08:00:19
It’s the 80th anniversary of the end of the Allied evacuation from Dunkirk, during which civilians answered the call to rescue Allied troops from the French seaport.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 3, 2020 from 2020-06-03T08:00:19
It’s the birthday of historical romance writer Kathleen Woodiwiss (1939-2007), who wrote her first novel secretly on a typewriter that she’d gifted to her husband.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 2, 2020 from 2020-06-02T08:00:03
It was on this day in 1865 that the Civil War came to a formal end. The war took 620,000 American lives.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 1, 2020 from 2020-06-01T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), who said, "I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 31, 2020 from 2020-05-31T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of poet Walt Whitman (1819), who was once fired from a job at the Department of the Interior for being a "very bad man" and a "free lover."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 30, 2020 from 2020-05-30T08:00:14
It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France at the age of 19. About 500 years later, she was canonized as a Catholic saint.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 29, 2020 from 2020-05-29T08:00:11
It was on this day in 1913 that the world premiere of Igor Stravinsky's “Le Sacre du printemps” caused a riot at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 28, 2020 from 2020-05-28T08:00:11
“When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing in life, really.” –Maeve Binchy, born this day in 1940
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 from 2020-05-27T08:00:03
On this day in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge opened. The idea of the bridge was first broached in 1869 by a man who called himself the "Emperor of the United States."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 26, 2020 from 2020-05-26T08:20:03
It’s the birthday of photographer and author Dorothea Lange (1895), whose iconic work for the Farm Security Administration gave human faces to the Great Depression.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 25, 2020 from 2020-05-25T08:00:06
“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole…” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, born this day in 1803
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 24, 2020 from 2020-05-24T08:00:16
“Writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day.” –author Michael Chabon, born this day in 1963
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 23, 2020 from 2020-05-23T08:00:06
It’s the birthday of “Goodnight Moon” author Margaret Wise Brown (1910). She was a prolific writer and sometimes kept six different publishers busy at once with her projects.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 22, 2020 from 2020-05-22T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of Harvey Milk (1930), the first openly gay man elected to public office. Assassinated in San Francisco in 1978, he would have been 90 years old today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 21, 2020 from 2020-05-21T08:00:18
On this day in 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. After her experiences in the Civil War, she saw a need for a neutral organization to help soldiers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 from 2020-05-20T08:00:18
On this day in 1946, English-born poet W.H. Auden became a U.S. citizen. He’d first moved there in 1939, and he lived for a time with artists such as Carson McCullers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 19, 2020 from 2020-05-19T08:00:19
It's the birthday of the playwright Lorraine Hansberry (Chicago, 1930), who wrote the classic play “A Raisin in the Sun” when she was just 27 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 18, 2020 from 2020-05-18T08:00:18
On this day in 1860––160 years ago––Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 17, 2020 from 2020-05-17T08:00:20
On this day 16 years ago, Massachusetts became the first state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 16, 2020 from 2020-05-16T08:00:02
“My work is for people who want to imagine and claim wider horizons and carry on about them into the night” –poet Adrienne Rich, born this day in 1929
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 15, 2020 from 2020-05-15T08:00:05
Emily Dickinson died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on this date in 1886 at the age of 56. The first volume of her poems was published 4 years later.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 14, 2020 from 2020-05-14T08:15:11
On this day in 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner inoculated a child with a smallpox vaccine, which was developed from cowpox. It was the first safe vaccine.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 13, 2020 from 2020-05-13T08:15:09
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory… for without victory, there is no survival.” – Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, May 13, 1940.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 from 2020-05-12T08:15:13
It’s the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale, possibly the most famous nurse of all time and a tireless advocate for the rights and improved care of patients.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 11, 2020 from 2020-05-11T08:15:02
Today Glacier National Park celebrates its 110th birthday. When founded in 1910, there were at least 150 glaciers in that area of Montana. Today there are only 25.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 10, 2020 from 2020-05-10T08:00:09
Today is Mother's Day, and also the birthday of "Mother" Maybelle Carter (1909), who made her name in country music as part of The Carter Family.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 9, 2020 from 2020-05-09T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of poet Ellen Bryant Voigt (1943), who said, “Resist any temptation to use the poem to make its readers like you, or admire you, or forgive you."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 8, 2020 from 2020-05-08T08:00:09
Today is believed to be the birthday of former slave Phillis Wheatley (1753), who was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 7, 2020 from 2020-05-07T08:00:12
"Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum." —Olympe de Gouges (born this day 1748), who died by the guillotine
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 from 2020-05-06T08:00:14
It was on this day in 1994 that the Channel Tunnel (or the "Chunnel") opened, making it possible to travel from London to Paris in less than three hours.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 from 2020-05-05T08:00:20
Today is Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates the Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 4, 2020 from 2020-05-04T08:00:16
“May the Fourth be with you!” Today is known as Star Wars Day, even though the anniversary of the first film’s release is actually May 25th.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 3, 2020 from 2020-05-03T08:00:17
"One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being." –the late poet May Sarton, born this day in 1912
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 2, 2020 from 2020-05-02T08:00:06
It’s the birthday of Dr. Benjamin Spock (New Haven, 1903), who wrote the parenting bible for all the post-war moms and dads raising the baby boomer generation.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 1, 2020 from 2020-05-01T08:00:09
“I'm out of it, but not too far out. I figure somewhere between 12 to 18 inches.” –Louis Jenkins (1942-2019), from today’s featured poem
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 30, 2020 from 2020-04-30T08:00:11
Charles Dickens' “A Tale of Two Cities” was first published in serial form on this date in 1859. The weekly journal it appeared in sold 125,000 copies.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 from 2020-04-29T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of William Randolph Hearst (1863), whose newspapers’ sensational reporting actually helped cause the Spanish-American War of 1898.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 from 2020-04-28T08:00:03
It's the birthday of poet Carolyn Forché (1950), whose first collection won the Yale Younger Poets Award and whose latest collection came out just last month.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 27, 2020 from 2020-04-27T08:00:10
It's the birthday of the author of the "Madeline" books, Ludwig Bemelmans, born in Austria in 1898.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 26, 2020 from 2020-04-26T08:00:17
It’s the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Anita Loos (1889), who wrote approximately 150 screenplays for silent films between 1913 and 1928.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 25, 2020 from 2020-04-25T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of 'First Lady of Song' Ella Fitzgerald (1917), who said, "The only thing better than singing is more singing."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 24, 2020 from 2020-04-24T08:00:17
The Library of Congress was established on this date in 1800. The library receives about 15,000 new items every workday, and its collection includes more than 24 million books.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 23, 2020 from 2020-04-23T08:00:21
Today we celebrate what we believe to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, and we feature one of the host’s favorite Shakespeare sonnets.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 22, 2020 from 2020-04-22T08:00:05
The first Earth Day was celebrated on this day 50 years ago, prompting the U.S. government to form the Environmental Protection Agency and pass major environmental acts.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 21, 2020 from 2020-04-21T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of Charlotte Brontë (1816), who published “Jane Eyre” under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Likewise, her sister Emily published “Wuthering Heights” under the name Ellis Bell.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 20, 2020 from 2020-04-20T08:00:05
The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later." –Joan Miró, born this day in 1893.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 19, 2020 from 2020-04-19T08:00:20
It's the birthday of poet Etheridge Knight (Mississippi, 1931), who published his first collection of poetry while serving a prison sentence.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 18, 2020 from 2020-04-18T08:00:16
Today is the birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Susan Faludi (1959), author of the seminal feminist text “Backlash” (1991).
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 17, 2020 from 2020-04-17T08:00:13
It's the birthday of Nick Hornby (1957), author of “High Fidelity” (1995), which was adapted into a movie in 2000 and a Hulu TV series this past February.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 16, 2020 from 2020-04-16T08:00:20
It's the birthday of Kingsley Amis (London, 1922), author of “Lucky Jim” (1954), which is considered one of the funniest novels in British literature.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 from 2020-04-15T08:00:16
It's the birthday of ‘the Empress of the Blues’ Bessie Smith (1898), who recorded150 blues numbers about poverty, unrequited love, and cruelty.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 from 2020-04-14T08:00:08
It’s the birthday of American journalist Tina Rosenberg (1960), a proponent of “solutions journalism” that works to solve the world’s problems.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 13, 2020 from 2020-04-13T08:00:19
It's the birthday of Alfred M. Butts (1899), an architect who invented the game of Scrabble while out of work during the Depression.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 12, 2020 from 2020-04-12T08:00:10
On this day in 1633, Galileo Galilei was put on trial for believing the Earth revolves around the sun. The Catholic Church didn’t formally admit that he was correct until 1992.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 11, 2020 from 2020-04-11T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of Dorothy Allison (1949), the novelist and memoirist who said, “The thing I’m telling you is true, but it did not always happen to me.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 10, 2020 from 2020-04-10T08:00:16
It's the 90th birthday of labor leader Dolores Huerta (1930), who helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 and who originated the phrase, “sí, se puede.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 9, 2020 from 2020-04-09T08:00:06
"The major trick to writing good historical fiction is not in compiling research or knowing the details, but in knowing which details to leave out." –Elizabeth Crook, born this day in 1959
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 8, 2020 from 2020-04-08T08:00:16
On this day 200 years ago, one of the world's most celebrated pieces of art was discovered by a farmer on the Greek island of Melos: the marble statue Venus de Milo.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 from 2020-04-07T08:00:13
It's the birthday of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (Detroit, 1939), who was heavily in debt when he was offered the job of directing what turned out to be “The Godfather” (1972).
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 6, 2020 from 2020-04-06T08:00:18
It's the birthday of country songwriter and singer Merle Haggard (1937), who wrote more than 600 songs in his lifetime, including about forty #1 hits.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 5, 2020 from 2020-04-05T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of Hattie Alexander (1901), who developed a treatment for the deadly childhood illness influenzal meningitis, also known as Hib.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 4, 2020 from 2020-04-04T08:00:09
It’s the birthday of Maya Angelou (1928-2014), who is best known for her writing but who also was a dancer, singer, civil rights activist, and world traveler.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 3, 2020 from 2020-04-03T08:00:19
On this day in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 2, 2020 from 2020-04-02T08:00:05
"My follies are the follies of youth. You will see that I laugh at them, and if you are kind you will laugh at them with me."
–Casanova, born this day in 1725
The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 from 2020-04-01T08:00:12
It’s the birthday of Rachel Maddow (1973), who went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and became the first openly gay American news anchor.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 31, 2020 from 2020-03-31T08:00:02
It starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said No,
it starts when you say We…
–from today’s poem by Marge Piercy
The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 30, 2020 from 2020-03-30T08:00:15
It's the birthday of Anna Sewell (1820), who was dependent on horses for transportation due to an injury. She published her novel “Black Beauty” in 1877.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 29, 2020 from 2020-03-29T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of Alexandra Fuller (1969), British-Zimbabwean author of “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” and several other memoirs.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 28, 2020 from 2020-03-28T08:00:12
It’s the birthday of novelist Lauren Weisberger (1977), who fictionalized her time working at Vogue magazine in the book, “The Devil Wears Prada.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 27, 2020 from 2020-03-27T08:00:16
On this day in 1912, President Taft’s wife, Helen, and the wife of the ambassador from Japan planted the first of Washington, D.C.’s cherry trees.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 26, 2020 from 2020-03-26T08:00:03
Featuring a poem by Bill Holm (1943-2009) called “What Beethoven’s Music Will Do to You.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 from 2020-03-25T08:00:09
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” –writer Flannery O’Connor, born this day in 1925
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 from 2020-03-24T08:00:03
It was on this day in 1882, German doctor and early microbiologist Robert Koch announced that he had found the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 23, 2020 from 2020-03-23T08:00:06
Ten years ago on this day, President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act, extending healthcare to almost 32 million Americans.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 22, 2020 from 2020-03-22T08:00:03
"I don't think people read poetry because they're interested in the poet. I think they're read poetry because they're interested in themselves." –Billy Collins, born this day in 1941
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 21, 2020 from 2020-03-21T08:00:02
It’s the anniversary of the first day of the Alabama Freedom March in 1965. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act less than five months later.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 20, 2020 from 2020-03-20T08:00:04
It was on this day in 1852 that Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel “Uncle Tom's Cabin” was published, inspired by Stowe’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 19, 2020 from 2020-03-19T08:00:18
Today is the birthday of comedian Jackie "Moms" Mabley (1894), who rose from difficult circumstances to become the first female headliner at The Apollo in 1939.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 18, 2020 from 2020-03-18T08:00:06
It’s the birthday of Wilfred Owen (1893), one of the first poets to depict the horrifying realities of war as opposed to the patriotic aspects. He died in the Great War at age 25.
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The Writer's Almanac -Tuesday, March 17, 2020 from 2020-03-17T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of Penelope Lively (1933), the only writer to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Booker Prize. Her memoir, “Life in the Garden,” was published in 2018.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 16, 2020 from 2020-03-16T08:00:05
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel “The Scarlet Letter” was published on this day 170 years ago. The first edition sold out in 10 days, and it’s still standard reading in public schools.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 15, 2020 from 2020-03-15T08:00:13
On this day in 1965, LBJ gave his “We Shall Overcome” speech demanding legislation to guarantee equal voting rights for all Americans.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 14, 2020 from 2020-03-14T08:00:03
“The Grapes of Wrath” was published on this day in 1939. John Steinbeck told his agent, “This will not be a popular book,” but it was a best-seller.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 13, 2020 from 2020-03-13T08:00:14
On this date in 1781, English astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, named after Ouranos, the Greek god of the sky.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 12, 2020 from 2020-03-12T08:00:03
On this day 11 years ago, Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts in the largest embezzlement and fraud case in Wall Street history.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 11, 2020 from 2020-03-11T08:00:06
On this day in 1918, the first cases of the influenza pandemic were reported in the U.S. when 107 soldiers got sick at Fort Riley, Kansas.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 10, 2020 from 2020-03-10T08:00:08
Harriet Tubman died on this day in 1913. Over 10 years and at least 13 trips, Harriet Tubman led some 300 souls out of slavery into freedom in Canada.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 9, 2020 from 2020-03-09T08:00:17
Today is the birthday of Vita Sackville-West (1892), who said, "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 8, 2020 from 2020-03-08T08:00:11
It’s the 60th birthday of Jeffery Eugenides, author of “The Virgin Suicides” (1993) and “Middlesex” (2002), both of which employ unique grammatical points of view.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 2020-03-07T09:00:02
It's the anniversary of the first March from Selma to Montgomery (1965). Footage of policemen attacking these marchers helped shift public opinion on the civil rights movement.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 6, 2020 from 2020-03-06T09:00:18
It’s the birthday of writer Gabriel García Márquez (Aracataca, Colombia, 1927) and of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Durham, England, 1806).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 2020-03-05T09:00:03
It’s the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, during which colonists taunted and threw ice and oysters at British soldiers, who responded with muskets.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 4, 2020 from 2020-03-04T09:00:17
On this day in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated. He brought with him Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member, who enacted important progressive policies.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 from 2020-03-03T09:00:18
It was on this day in 1931 that "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the official national anthem of the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 2, 2020 from 2020-03-02T09:00:10
Today is the birthday of the children’s author who wrote, “A person's a person, no matter how small.” Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss (1904).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 1, 2020 from 2020-03-01T09:00:20
It’s the birthday of Ralph Ellison (1914), who once typed the sentence, “I am an invisible man”—and then wrote a classic book about a character who might say that.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 29, 2020 from 2020-02-29T09:00:18
“I’ve never read a political poem that’s accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.” -Howard Nemerov, born this day in 1920.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 28, 2020 from 2020-02-28T09:00:11
It's the birthday of Linus Pauling (1901), who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954 as well as the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his opposition to WMDs.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 27, 2020 from 2020-02-27T09:00:03
It's the birthday of Kiowa novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday (Oklahoma, 1934), whose first novel “House Made of Dawn” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 from 2020-02-26T09:00:15
"To love another person is to see the face of God." –French novelist Victor Hugo, author of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” born this day in 1802
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 25, 2020 from 2020-02-25T09:00:17
On this day in 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for the persecution of Catholics.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 24, 2020 from 2020-02-24T09:00:15
Today is the birthday of Judith Butler (1956), who argued that we “perform” our gender in her 1990 text “Gender Trouble,” now essential reading in gender studies classes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 23, 2020 from 2020-02-23T09:00:20
The lines “This land is your land and this land is my land/From the California to the New York Island” were written on this day 80 years ago by Woody Guthrie.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 22, 2020 from 2020-02-22T09:00:04
It’s the birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892), a Jazz Age icon who drew huge crowds of adoring fans to her poetry readings and who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 21, 2020 from 2020-02-21T09:00:07
It was 95 years ago today that the first issue of The New Yorker was published, an issue that the editors apologized for in the second issue.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 20, 2020 from 2020-02-20T09:00:05
It’s the birthday of Kurt Cobain (1967), lead singer of the band Nirvana, as well as Robert Altman (1925), who directed films including “A Prairie Home Companion.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 19, 2020 from 2020-02-19T09:00:12
It’s the birthday of novelist Carson McCullers (1917), who published “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” when she was just 23 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 18, 2020 from 2020-02-18T09:00:04
Today is the birthday of Sholem Aleichem (1895), known as the Mark Twain of Yiddish literature. He said, “No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 17, 2020 from 2020-02-17T09:00:05
It’s the birthday of English crime novelist Ruth Rendell (1930-2015), who said, “The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 16, 2020 from 2020-02-16T09:00:10
It's the birthday of the printer Giambattista Bodoni (Italy, 1740), namesake of the popular typeface Bodoni. He personally designed around 300 typefaces.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 15, 2020 from 2020-02-15T09:00:16
Today is the 200th birthday of Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1920, 14 years after her death, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 14, 2020 from 2020-02-14T09:00:15
Today is Saint Valentine’s Day, named for a Roman priest who performed clandestine weddings in defiance of Emperor Claudius II’s law forbidding marriage.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 13, 2020 from 2020-02-13T09:00:03
To get you in the mood for Valentine’s Day, today we feature love stories from fiction and history, from John & Abigail Adams to Romeo & Juliet.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 from 2020-02-12T09:00:34
On this day in 1809, two of the world’s most famous men were born: Abraham Lincoln, in Hodgenville, Kentucky, and Charles Darwin in Shropshire, England.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 11, 2020 from 2020-02-11T09:00:12
It’s the birthday of Thomas Edison (Ohio, 1847), who amassed 1,093 patents for inventions including the phonograph, the light bulb, and the movie camera.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 10, 2020 from 2020-02-10T09:00:10
Today is the 50th birthday of Åsne Seierstad, the Norwegian journalist and author of “The Bookseller of Kabul.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 9, 2020 from 2020-02-09T09:00:10
On this day in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, as studio audience members screamed and 73 million people watched from home.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 8, 2020 from 2020-02-08T09:00:05
It’s the 96th birthday of translator and poet Lisel Mueller (1924), who said, “There is a double satisfaction in being someone else and still being myself.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 7, 2020 from 2020-02-07T09:00:03
It’s the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867), who was 65 years old when she published “Little House in the Big Woods.” It sold very well despite being published during the Depression.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 6, 2020 from 2020-02-06T09:00:21
Today is the birthday of the man who wrote, "Come live with me and be my love / And we will all the pleasures prove" —Christopher Marlowe (1564).
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 from 2020-02-05T09:00:05
Today is the birthday of actor and writer Christopher Guest (1948), who has written mockumentaries including “This is Spinal Tap” (1984) and “A Mighty Wind” (2004).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 4, 2020 from 2020-02-04T09:00:05
Today is the birthday of feminist Betty Friedan (1921), who wrote in “The Feminine Mystique” about the cultural myth that women should find total fulfillment as wives and mothers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 3, 2020 from 2020-02-03T09:00:12
On this day 150 years ago, the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified to give all male citizens the right to vote regardless of their race.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 2, 2020 from 2020-02-02T09:00:15
Today is the birthday of James Joyce (1882) and also the day his “Ulysses” was published in 1922. He said of writing, “In the particular is contained the universal.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 1, 2020 from 2020-02-01T09:00:19
It’s the birthday of Harlem Renaissance icon Langston Hughes (1902), a writer who had also worked as a Paris nightclub doorman, a seaman on ships, a waiter, and a truck farmer.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 31, 2020 from 2020-01-31T09:00:06
Today is the birthday of Norman Mailer (1923), whose best-selling first novel “The Naked and the Dead” made him a celebrity at 25 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 30, 2020 from 2020-01-30T09:00:14
Today is the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1972 shooting of unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland by the British army.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 from 2020-01-29T09:00:05
On this day in 1996, Venice’s La Fenice, one of the most beautiful and important opera houses in the world, burned to the ground.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 28, 2020 from 2020-01-28T09:00:05
It’s the birthday of writer Colette (1873), who said, "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 27, 2020 from 2020-01-27T09:00:13
Today is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756), who in his brief 35 years of life made a cultural mark on the world that would last for centuries.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 26, 2020 from 2020-01-26T09:00:21
It's the birthday of songwriter Lucinda Williams (1953), whose advice to artists includes a warning against inscrutability: “Offer your art up to the whole world, not just an elite few."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 25, 2020 from 2020-01-25T09:00:09
It’s the birthday of Virginia Woolf (1882), who began writing professionally in her early 20s after a mental breakdown. Her novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927).
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 24, 2020 from 2020-01-24T09:00:16
“I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms.” –Edith Wharton, born this day in 1862.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 23, 2020 from 2020-01-23T09:00:03
Thursday, January 23, 2020
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 from 2020-01-22T09:00:06
It’s the 47th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling forbidding states from outlawing abortions in the first trimester.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 from 2020-01-21T09:00:17
It's the birthday of Eva Ibbotson (1925), who said, “My aim is to produce books that are light, humorous, even a little erudite but secure in their happy endings.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 20, 2020 from 2020-01-20T09:00:07
It's MLK Day and the birthday of the musician known as Lead Belly (1889), whose hit songs include “The Midnight Special,” “Rock Island Line,” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 19, 2020 from 2020-01-19T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of Dolly Parton (1946), who started performing professionally when she was 10, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry when she was 13.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 18, 2020 from 2020-01-18T09:00:14
Today is the birthday of the man who answered Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone call: Bell’s assistant Thomas Watson (1854).
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 17, 2020 from 2020-01-17T09:00:08
The Eighteenth Amendment took effect on this day 100 years ago, making illegal the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor in the U.S.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 16, 2020 from 2020-01-16T09:00:14
Today is the birthday of poet and memoirist Mary Karr (1955), who said, "Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 15, 2020 from 2020-01-15T09:00:19
“If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion…” –Martin Luther King, Jr. (b. 1929)
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 14, 2020 from 2020-01-14T09:00:14
It’s the birthday of Emily Hahn (1905), who wrote 54 books and more than 200 articles for “The New Yorker,” crossed Africa on foot, and kicked an opium habit through hypnosis.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 13, 2020 from 2020-01-13T09:00:06
Today is the birthday of Michael Bond (1926), author of “Paddington Bear,” who wrote, “One of the nice things about writing for children is their total acceptance of the fantastic.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 12, 2020 from 2020-01-12T09:00:16
Today is the birthday of Walter Mosley (1952), author of the Easy Rawlins detective stories, the first of which is “Devil in a Blue Dress.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 11, 2020 from 2020-01-11T09:00:09
Elizabeth I held England’s first recorded state lottery on this date in 1569 in order to raise funds for public projects including rebuilding some harbors.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 10, 2020 from 2020-01-10T09:00:14
Today is the birthday of the poet Dorianne Laux (1952), who wrote, “you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 9, 2020 from 2020-01-09T09:00:09
Today is the birthday of literary critic Michiko Kakutani (1955), who wrote her first book in 2018: “The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 from 2020-01-08T09:00:11
Today would have been the 85th birthday of Elvis Presley (b. 1935), whose musical career began when he recorded a song for his mother’s birthday.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 from 2020-01-07T09:00:10
Today is the birthday of Zora Neale Hurston (1891), best known for her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937) and her posthumous bestseller “Baracoon” (2018).
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 6, 2020 from 2020-01-06T09:00:15
On this day 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school in Rome, Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House. There she developed her Montessori Method of education.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 5, 2020 from 2020-01-05T09:00:19
Featuring a poem by Louis Jenkins, who passed away at age 77 on December 21st. We loved featuring his wry words all these years on the Almanac. Rest in peace, Louis.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 4, 2020 from 2020-01-04T15:03:45
It’s the birthday of Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943), whose most recent book is "Leadership in Turbulent Times."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 3, 2020 from 2020-01-03T09:00:05
“In the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source."
–Lucretia Coffin Mott, born this day in 1793
The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 2, 2020 from 2020-01-02T09:00:18
Today is the birthday of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, born Petrovichi, Russia in 1920. He would be turning 100 today if he were still alive.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 1, 2020 from 2020-01-01T09:00:14
The first time that New Year's Day was celebrated on January 1st was in 45 B.C., when Caesar redid the Roman calendar (it later had to be corrected in the 1570s).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 31, 2019 from 2019-12-31T09:00:11
It's the birthday of activist and folk singer Odetta (1930), who inspired other folk singers such as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 30, 2019 from 2019-12-30T09:00:04
Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced the discovery of other galaxies on this date in 1924. At the time, people thought the Milky Way constituted the entire universe.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 29, 2019 from 2019-12-29T09:00:10
Today is the 60th birthday of Paula Poundstone, who said, "Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up 'cause they're looking for ideas."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 28, 2019 from 2019-12-28T09:00:14
It’s the birthday of humorist Sam Levenson (1911), who said, "Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 27, 2019 from 2019-12-27T09:00:12
Today is the birthday of Louis Pasteur (1822) who discovered that most infectious diseases are caused by germs and that instituting sanitary conditions in hospitals could save many lives.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 26, 2019 from 2019-12-26T09:00:10
Today is the birthday of David Sedaris (1956), who said, “Write every day and read everything you can get your hands on. Write every day with a pen that’s shaped like a candy cane.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 25, 2019 from 2019-12-25T09:00:16
On this day in 1956, Harper Lee’s friends gave her a large sum of money with the instruction to take a year off from working at an airline, and to start writing instead.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 from 2019-12-24T09:00:20
Today on Christmas Eve, we feature a story called "Dancing Dan's Christmas" by Damon Runyon and the poem “A Christmas Carol” by G.K. Chesterton.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 23, 2019 from 2019-12-23T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of Norman Maclean (1902), a fisherman, firefighter, scholar, and teacher, and author of the novel A River Runs Through It.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 22, 2019 from 2019-12-22T09:00:11
It was on this day in 1946 that George Bernard Shaw wrote to the Reynolds News: “Christmas is for me simply a nuisance…of mendacity, gluttony, and drunkenness”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 21, 2019 from 2019-12-21T09:00:04
Today is the Winter Solstice. It is also the 140th anniversary of the world premiere of Henrik Ibsen's play “A Doll's House” at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 20, 2019 from 2019-12-20T09:00:11
Today is the birthday of the author Elizabeth Benedict (1954). Her most recent book is “Me, My Hair and I: 27 Women Untangle an Obsession.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 19, 2019 from 2019-12-19T09:00:08
On this day in 1843 "A Christmas Carol" was published by Charles Dickens, introducing the world to the characters of Scrooge and Tiny Tim.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 from 2019-12-18T09:00:16
Today is the birthday Charles Wesley (1708), cofounder of Methodism and writer of the Christmas hymn, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 from 2019-12-17T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of Penelope Fitzgerald (1916), who wrote, “I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 16, 2019 from 2019-12-16T09:00:18
Today is the birthday of Jane Austen (1775), author of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility,” and “Emma.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 15, 2019 from 2019-12-15T09:00:12
Today is the birthday of Irish author Edna O'Brien (1930). Six of her novels were banned in Catholic Ireland for content about the sex lives and subjugation of women.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 14, 2019 from 2019-12-14T09:00:19
On this date in 1542, six-day-old Mary Stuart ascended the throne of Scotland. She spent her childhood in France and returned to rule Scotland when she was 18.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 13, 2019 from 2019-12-13T09:00:21
Today is the birthday of Tamora Pierce (1954), who writes young adult fantasies featuring strong female protagonists.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 12, 2019 from 2019-12-12T09:00:14
Today is the birthday of novelist Gustav Flaubert (1821), and physician and poet Erasmus Darwin (1731), grandfather of Charles Darwin.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 from 2019-12-11T09:00:15
Today is the shared birthday of two notable authors, and friends, Thomas McGuane (1939) and Jim Harrison (1937).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 10, 2019 from 2019-12-10T09:00:15
Emily Dickinson was born on this day in 1830. When a book of her poems was first published posthumously, it went through 11 editions in one year.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 9, 2019 from 2019-12-09T09:00:14
On this date in 1979, the smallpox virus was declared eradicated. It remains the only disease eliminated by science.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 8, 2019 from 2019-12-08T09:00:07
Today is the birthday of the humorist and cartoonist James Thurber, who said, “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 7, 2019 from 2019-12-07T09:00:15
Today is the birthday of novelist Susan Minot (1956), who said, “Every family, like every person, is imperfect…The idea that there is a Family somewhere who functions is an odd concept.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 6, 2019 from 2019-12-06T09:00:05
Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas. In many parts of the world, children put out their shoes last night to receive chocolates and gifts from St. Nick.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 5, 2019 from 2019-12-05T09:00:20
It’s the birthday of Rose Wilder Lane (1886), who was an established journalist and author before collaborating with her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, on the “Little House” books.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 from 2019-12-04T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875), whose mother dressed him in dresses, braided his hair, and generally treated him like a girl.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 from 2019-12-03T09:00:13
Neon lighting was first demonstrated by engineer and chemist Georges Claude in Paris on this day in 1910.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 2, 2019 from 2019-12-02T09:00:10
Today is the birthday of Ann Patchett (1963), author of “Bel Canto” (2001), “Truth & Beauty” (2005), and most recently, “The Dutch House” (2019).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 1, 2019 from 2019-12-01T09:00:06
It was on this day in 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of a bus to a white passenger.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 30, 2019 from 2019-11-30T09:00:18
Today is the birthday of the man who became Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens (1835). He once said, “Familiarity breeds contempt — and children."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 29, 2019 from 2019-11-29T09:00:15
Today is the birthday of Louisa May Alcott (1832), author of “Little Women,” in which she wrote, “Be worthy, love, and love will come.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 28, 2019 from 2019-11-28T09:00:06
Today is the birthday of William Blake (1757), who said, "The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 from 2019-11-27T09:00:19
It's the birthday of Bill Nye the Science Guy, who created the beloved 1990s kids’ show and recently launched "Bill Nye Saves the World" on Netflix.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 from 2019-11-26T09:00:10
On this day in 1922 the tomb of Egypt's child pharaoh, Tutankhamun, was opened for the first time in 3000 years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 25, 2019 from 2019-11-25T09:00:16
Featuring a poem by David Kirby, “You Found That Thing You Lost,” and the birthdays of Joe DiMaggio (1914) and P.D. Eastman (1909).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 24, 2019 from 2019-11-24T09:00:03
Today is the birthday of Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy, who won the Booker Prize for her first novel, “The God Of Small Things.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 23, 2019 from 2019-11-23T09:00:11
On this day 1924, that astronomer Edwin Hubble announced his discovery of the Andromeda Nebula, the first galaxy identified outside our own.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 22, 2019 from 2019-11-22T09:00:11
Today is the birthday of the English Victorian author Mary Ann Evans (1819), better known by her pseudonym George Eliot.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 21, 2019 from 2019-11-21T09:00:15
Today is the birthday of Marilyn French (1929), who wrote fiction and non-fiction about radical feminism including the influential novel “The Women’s Room.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 20, 2019 from 2019-11-20T09:00:21
Today is the birthday of Nadine Gordimer (1923) who said, "Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 19, 2019 from 2019-11-19T09:00:05
It’s the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address, which reminded a nation engaged in civil war of its commitment to liberty, equality, and freedom.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 18, 2019 from 2019-11-18T09:00:12
Today is the 80th birthday of the author of Margaret Atwood, author of “The Handmaid's Tale,” in which she wrote: “Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 17, 2019 from 2019-11-17T09:00:18
"The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30" –Lorne Michaels, born this day in 1944.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 16, 2019 from 2019-11-16T09:00:02
Today is the birthday of Andrea Barrett (1954), a biologist by training whose fiction often features women in science.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 15, 2019 from 2019-11-15T09:00:14
It’s the birthday of Jessica Abel (1969), who said, "My own method of making comics is at least unteachable, if not just plain unadvisable."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 14, 2019 from 2019-11-14T09:00:17
Today is the birthday of Astrid Lindgren (1907), who created the red-haired, pigtailed, nine-year-old character named Pippi Longstocking.
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The Writer's Almanac -Wednesday, November 13, 2019 from 2019-11-13T09:00:11
Today is the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850), whose novel “Treasure Island” was based on a game he invented to entertain his stepson.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 12, 2019 from 2019-11-12T09:00:16
Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815) an American suffragist and abolitionist. She published three volumes of “The History of Woman Suffrage.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 11, 2019 from 2019-11-11T09:00:05
Today is Veterans Day, and it’s also the birthday of U.S. Army veteran and author Kurt Vonnegut (1922).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 10, 2019 from 2019-11-10T09:00:20
On this day in 1973, school officials in Drake, North Dakota burned copies of Kurt Vonnegut's novel “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 9, 2019 from 2019-11-09T09:00:11
Today is the birthday of Anne Sexton (1929), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Live or Die” and “All My Pretty Ones.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 8, 2019 from 2019-11-08T09:00:08
On this day in 1894, Robert Frost's first poem, "My Butterfly," was published, beginning his poetic career.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 7, 2019 from 2019-11-07T09:00:20
It’s the birthday of Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867) who is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields, Physics and Chemistry.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 6, 2019 from 2019-11-06T09:00:12
It’s the birthday of John Philip Sousa (1854), a composer and author who feared recorded music would stop the world from singing.
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The Writers Almanac - Tuesday, November 5, 2019 from 2019-11-05T09:00:20
Playwright Sam Shepard was born on this day in 1943. He said of creativity, “When you hit a wall, just kick it in.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 4, 2019 from 2019-11-04T09:00:08
Today is the birthday of poet C. K. Williams (1936), and of Tamim Ansary, who wrote the memoir “West of Kabul, East of New York.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 3, 2019 from 2019-11-03T09:00:21
On this day in 1793, Olympe de Gouges, author of “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,” was sent to the guillotine.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 2, 2019 from 2019-11-02T08:00:08
Today we feature a poem by Raphael Kosek, “The Way West,” and mark the birthday of Marie Antoinette (1755).
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 1, 2019 from 2019-11-01T08:00:10
Today is the birthday of novelist Susanna Clarke (1959), author of “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 31, 2019 from 2019-10-31T08:00:03
Today is the birthday of the poet who said, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness"––John Keats.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 30, 2019 from 2019-10-30T08:00:19
Today we feature a poem by Marjorie Saiser, “Word Gets Out About the Divorce,” and celebrate the birthday of President John Adams.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 29, 2019 from 2019-10-29T08:00:20
On this day in 1929, prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. Later dubbed Black Tuesday, it began the Great Depression.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 28, 2019 from 2019-10-28T08:00:11
On this day in 1886, the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled: a gift from France celebrating the two countries' shared love of freedom.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 27, 2019 from 2019-10-27T08:00:09
Today is the birthday Zadie Smith (1975), who says of her first book White Teeth that she wanted to write about a man who “lives a good life by accident.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 26, 2019 from 2019-10-26T08:00:07
It was on this day in 1825 that the Erie Canal opened. The local laborers and Irish immigrants were paid 80 cents plus a ration of whiskey for 14-hour workdays.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 25, 2019 from 2019-10-25T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of novelist Anne Tyler (1941), who said, "I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 24, 2019 from 2019-10-24T08:00:14
Today is the birthday of Denise Levertov (1923), who said, ”in certain ways writing is a form of prayer."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 from 2019-10-23T08:00:11
On this day in 1920, Sinclair Lewis's novel “Main Street," about a young city woman who moves to a small town, was published.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 from 2019-10-22T08:00:09
Today is the birthday of Doris Lessing (1919-2013), who said, “A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away…It's one of the great pleasures in my life."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 21, 2019 from 2019-10-21T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018). Best known for her fantasy series Earthsea, she also wrote children’s books, poetry, essays, fiction, and non-fiction.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 20, 2019 from 2019-10-20T08:00:19
Today is the birthday of novelist Monica Ali (1967), political humorist Art Buchwald (1925), and composer Charles Ives (1874).
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 19, 2019 from 2019-10-19T08:00:13
Today is the birthday of Tracy Chevalier (1962) who advises “Don't write about yourself — you aren't as interesting as you think.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 18, 2019 from 2019-10-18T08:00:12
Today we feature a poem called “Seasoned” by Tim Nolan and celebrate the birthday of journalist A.J. Liebling (1904).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 17, 2019 from 2019-10-17T08:00:18
Today is the birthday of playwright Arthur Miller (1915), who said, “The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 from 2019-10-16T08:00:17
Today is the birthday of Oscar Wilde (1854), who once said, “Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 from 2019-10-15T08:00:19
Today is the birthday of humorist P.G. Wodehouse (1881), who made his novels "like musical comedies without the music, ignoring real life completely."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 14, 2019 from 2019-10-14T08:00:14
On this day in 1926, A.A. Milne published a short story collection about his son’s stuffed bear called “Winnie-the-Pooh.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 13, 2019 from 2019-10-13T08:00:09
One of the most beautiful love letters ever written, from John Keats to Fanny Brawne, was composed on this date in 1819.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 12, 2019 from 2019-10-12T08:00:09
It’s the anniversary of the first Octoberfest in 1810, which celebrated a royal wedding between Bavaria and Saxony.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 11, 2019 from 2019-10-11T08:00:10
Eleanor Roosevelt was born on this day in 1884. She said, "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 10, 2019 from 2019-10-10T15:00
Today is the birthday of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930), who wrote his play “The Room” in just four days.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 from 2019-10-09T08:00:16
On this day in 1940, John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England. He wrote the songs “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “All You Need is Love,” and “Imagine.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 8, 2019 from 2019-10-08T08:00:15
Today is the birthday of R.L. Stein (1943), author of the horror series for children “Goosebumps” and the “Fear Street” series for young adults.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 7, 2019 from 2019-10-07T08:00:15
Today is the birthday of Desmond Tutu (1931), who said, “Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate…that’s where the courage of a leader comes.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 6, 2019 from 2019-10-06T08:00:08
On this day in 1847 “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë was published. Brontë's masterwork was originally published under the androgynous pseudonym Currer Bell.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 5, 2019 from 2019-10-05T08:00:17
Today in 1789 the Women's March on Versailles occurred. Thousands of women overtook the palace and captured the King in a turning point for the French Revolution.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 4, 2019 from 2019-10-04T08:00:10
Today in 1941 two prominent American writers were born: the gothic novelist Anne Rice, and the humorist Roy Blount Jr.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 3, 2019 from 2019-10-03T08:00:11
Today we feature the birthday of etiquette expert Emily Post (1873) and the poem “Rush Hour” by Anita Pulier.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 from 2019-10-02T08:00:17
Today we feature the poem “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” by Wallace Stevens, who was born on this day in Reading, Pennsylvania, 1879.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 from 2019-10-01T08:00:11
On this day in 1903 the first World Series of Baseball game was played by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 30, 2019 from 2019-09-30T08:00:05
It’s the birthday of W.S. Merwin (1927-2019), who in the poem “Place,” wrote, “On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 29, 2019 from 2019-09-29T08:00:10
It is believed to be the birthday of Miguel de Cervantes (1547), who first envisioned his masterpiece “Don Quixote” while in a Spanish prison.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 28, 2019 from 2019-09-28T08:00:10
On this day in 1928, Alexander Fleming found that a blue-green mold was killing the staph bacteria he was attempting to grow. Thus was Penicillin discovered.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 27, 2019 from 2019-09-27T08:00:13
It’s the birthday E = mc², Albert Einstein’s equation revealing that matter and energy are fundamentally “different manifestations of the same thing.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 26, 2019 from 2019-09-26T08:00:19
It’s the birthday of T.S. Eliot (1888), who in 1948 won the Nobel Prize in literature and admittance to the Order of the British Empire.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 from 2019-09-25T08:00:13
Today is the 38th anniversary of Sandra Day O'Connor being sworn in as a United States Supreme Court Justice, and the 230th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 from 2019-09-24T08:00:13
It’s the birthday of the creator of Kermit the Frog, Jim Henson (1936), who made the iconic amphibian from his mother’s green coat.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 23, 2019 from 2019-09-23T08:00:12
On this day in 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned to St. Louis, MO from their expedition to the Pacific Ocean.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 22, 2019 from 2019-09-22T08:00:04
It was on this day in 1961 that Congress approved a bill to establish the Peace Corps, and President Kennedy signed it into law.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 21, 2019 from 2019-09-21T08:00:02
Today is the birthday of Stephen King (1947). When asked why he writes, he said, "The answer to that is fairly simple — there was nothing else I was made to do."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 20, 2019 from 2019-09-20T08:00:08
Today is the birthday of Stephen King (1947). When asked why he writes, he said, "The answer to that is fairly simple — there was nothing else I was made to do."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 19, 2019 from 2019-09-19T08:00:20
Today is the 99th birthday of "New Yorker" essayist and editor Roger Angell, who’s been with the publication for 75 years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 from 2019-09-18T08:00:05
It was on this day in 1851, the first edition of "The New York Times" was published. The paper reached 10,000 in circulation within 10 days.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 17, 2019 from 2019-09-17T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of Ken Kesey (1935), author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” a novel based on his experiences working in a veterans hospital.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 16, 2019 from 2019-09-16T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of H.A. Rey (1898) whose story “The Adventures of Fifi” became the beloved book “Curious George.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 15, 2019 from 2019-09-15T08:00:10
On this day in 1890, an English child named Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller was born; she would become famed mystery writer Agatha Christie.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 14, 2019 from 2019-09-14T08:00:19
Today is the birthday of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849), who taught the world about conditional reflexes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 13, 2019 from 2019-09-13T08:00:07
It was on this day in 1814 that Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 12, 2019 from 2019-09-12T08:00:15
Today in 1846, poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning eloped. Elizabeth’s sonnet “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” is about their love.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 11, 2019 from 2019-09-11T08:00:12
Today we hear a poem from Joyce Sutphen about “Things You Didn’t Put on Your Résumé.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 10, 2019 from 2019-09-10T08:00:21
Today is the birthday of Mary Oliver (1935-2019), who wrote, "When it's over, I want to say all my life / I was a bride married to amazement."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 9, 2019 from 2019-09-09T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828), whose famous tome “War and Peace” was originally titled “1805.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 8, 2019 from 2019-09-08T08:00:21
It was on this day in 1920 that the first transcontinental U.S. airmail service began, from New York to San Francisco.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 7, 2019 from 2019-09-07T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of Edith Sitwell (1887), who once said, "I am not an eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 6, 2019 from 2019-09-06T08:00:15
Today we feature the poem “While I Was Sleeping” by Olivia Stiffler and celebrate the birthday of Alice Sebold, author of "The Lovely Bones."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 5, 2019 from 2019-09-05T08:00:13
Today is the birthday of comedian and actor Bob Newhart who said, “Don't rush into adulthood; it isn't all that much fun."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 from 2019-09-04T08:00:18
It was on this day in 1886 that Geronimo, the last major Native American warrior, surrendered after 30 years of fighting in Arizona.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 3, 2019 from 2019-09-03T08:00:12
It's the birthday of the youngest woman ever to receive the Booker Prize: Kiran Desai, born in New Delhi, India (1971).
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 2, 2019 from 2019-09-02T08:00:17
It was on this day in 1901 that Theodore Roosevelt uttered his famous words "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 1, 2019 from 2019-09-01T08:00:17
San Francisco's first cable car, invented by Andrew Smith Hallidie, began regular service on this date in 1873.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 31, 2019 from 2019-08-31T08:00:14
The first radio news program was aired on Detroit’s 8MK on this date in 1920.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 30, 2019 from 2019-08-30T08:00:10
The author of the novel “Frankenstein,” Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley, was born on this day in 1797.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 29, 2019 from 2019-08-29T08:00:09
It’s the birthday of John Locke, who wrote, "Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 28, 2019 from 2019-08-28T08:00:20
Today is the birthday of Rita Dove, who wrote, “I’m an African-American poet; I’m a woman poet; I’m an American poet. But I’m a poet first.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 from 2019-08-27T08:00:17
Today’s featured poem is “A World of Want” by Tina Schuman from her book “Praising the Paradox.”
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The Writer’s Almanac – Monday, August 26, 2019 from 2019-08-26T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of Roman Catholic nun and missionary Mother Teresa, born 1910.
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The Writer’s Almanac – Sunday, August 25, 2019 from 2019-08-25T08:00:06
On this day in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the act that established the National Park Service.
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The Writer’s Almanac – Saturday, August 24, 2019 from 2019-08-24T08:00:03
On this day almost 2000 years ago Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the city of Pompeii, preserving a glimpse into the life of Roman civilization.
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The Writer’s Almanac – Friday, August 23, 2019 from 2019-08-23T08:00:03
Humorist Will Cuppy was born on this day in 1884. He lived in a tar paper shack for 8 years before publishing "How to be a Hermit" in 1929.
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The Writer’s Almanac – Thursday, August 22, 2019 from 2019-08-22T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of Annie Proulx who wrote, "If we write simply about what we know we never grow."
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The Writer’s Almanac – Wednesday, August 21, 2019 from 2019-08-21T08:00:21
Featuring the poetry of Joyce Sutphen and honoring the birthdays of Robert Stone and X.J. Kennedy.
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The Writer’s Almanac – Tuesday, August 20, 2019 from 2019-08-20T08:00:15
Today we feature the poem "The Story" by Fred Chappell and recognize the birthday of Jacqueline Susann, author of "Valley of the Dolls."
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The Writer’s Almanac – Monday, August 19, 2019 from 2019-08-19T08:00:04
Today is the birthday of the creator of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry, and of aircraft pioneer Orville Wright.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 18, 2019 from 2019-08-18T08:00:16
On this date in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. However, many loopholes ensured that in effect, only white women got to exercise the right to vote.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 17, 2019 from 2019-08-17T08:00:02
It’s the birthday of actress and playwright Mae West (1893), who said, “Between two evils, I like to pick the one I haven't tried before” and, "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 16, 2019 from 2019-08-16T08:00:02
On this day in 1896, gold was discovered in the Yukon Territory. About a year later, a hundred thousand people trekked over to Canada in search of fortune.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 15, 2019 from 2019-08-15T08:00:19
It’s the birthday of Swedish journalist and novelist Stieg Larsson (1954), author of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” who became extremely famous only posthumously.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 from 2019-08-14T08:00:15
Today is the birthday of cartoonist Gary Larson (1950), creator of the beloved comic strip “The Far Side,” which ran from 1980 to 1995.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 from 2019-08-13T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of sharpshooter Annie Oakley (1860), who could shoot the wick off a burning candle or the ashes off the tip of her husband’s cigarette.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 12, 2019 from 2019-08-12T08:00:16
It’s the birthday of Zerna Sharp (1889), who created the “Dick and Jane” book series used in classrooms until the late 1960s.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 11, 2019 from 2019-08-11T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of poet and "The New Yorker" poetry critic Louise Bogan (1897), who wrote in one review, “They will never surprise anyone again…They are half-dead already.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 10, 2019 from 2019-08-10T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of Joyce Sutphen, who was appointed poet laureate of the State of Minnesota in 2011, and who grew up on a farm in St. Joseph.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 9, 2019 from 2019-08-09T08:00:17
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 8, 2019 from 2019-08-08T08:00:16
On this date in 1929, the Graf Zeppelin airship took off from Lakehurst, New Jersey, on a round-the-world flight. Passengers included journalist Lady Grace Drummond-Hay.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 from 2019-08-07T08:00:13
On this date in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl's raft “Kon-Tiki” crashed into a reef in French Polynesia. He'd sailed from Peru to prove that early South Americans could have traveled across the Pacific.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 from 2019-08-06T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of Sir Alexander Fleming (1881), who accidentally discovered the antibacterial properties of penicillin in 1928.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 5, 2019 from 2019-08-05T08:00:05
On this day in 1957, a popular dance and music show called "American Bandstand," hosted by a young Dick Clark, went national and introduced rock and roll to millions of people.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 4, 2019 from 2019-08-04T08:00:02
The plans for the city of Chicago were laid out on this date in 1830, when only 100 people lived there. Just 20 years later, the first rail line was completed.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 3, 2019 from 2019-08-03T08:00:18
Today is the birthday of PD James (1920), who was 42 when she published her first crime novel and 59 years old when her big hit “Innocent Blood” came out.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 2, 2019 from 2019-08-02T08:10:02
It’s the birthday of James Baldwin (1924), who said, "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 1, 2019 from 2019-08-01T08:00:02
It’s the birthday of Maria Mitchell (1818), who grew up assisting her father with astronomical observations and who became the first female astronomy professor in the US.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 from 2019-07-31T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi (1919), who warned of those “ready to believe and act without asking questions.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 from 2019-07-30T08:00:10
On this day 54 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law, creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 29, 2019 from 2019-07-29T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of Stanley Kunitz (1905), who was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of the United States when he was 95 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 28, 2019 from 2019-07-28T08:00:14
“I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I'm not quite sure.”
–poet John Ashbery, born this day in 1927
The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 27, 2019 from 2019-07-27T08:00:07
230 years ago on this day, the Department of Foreign Affairs––later renamed the State Department––was created. Thomas Jefferson served as the first secretary of state.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 26, 2019 from 2019-07-26T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of movie director Stanley Kubrick (1928). His best-known films include "2001: A Space Odyssey"; "A Clockwork Orange"; and "The Shining."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 25, 2019 from 2019-07-25T08:00:21
On this day in 1952, the archipelago of Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 24, 2019 from 2019-07-24T08:00:13
It's the birthday of Amelia Earhart (1897). She had been studying medicine when she went to her first air show in California, and it was then that she decided to become a pilot.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 from 2019-07-23T08:00:03
It was on this day in 1903 that the Ford Motor Company sold its first car. The Model A was painted red, fit two people, had no roof, and reached 28 mph at top speed.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 22, 2019 from 2019-07-22T08:00:19
It’s the birthday of Johann Gregor Mendel (1822), whose experiments on pea plants helped him develop his theory of inheritance, including the notion of recombination of genes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 21, 2019 from 2019-07-21T08:00:14
The first U.S. train robbery west of the Mississippi took place in Adair, Iowa, on this day in 1873, when the James Gang held up the Rock Island Express.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 20, 2019 from 2019-07-20T08:00:07
It’s the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin left a plaque on the moon that ended with, “We came in peace for all mankind.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 19, 2019 from 2019-07-19T08:00:03
On this day 65 years ago, the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” was published. The three complete volumes were more than 500,000 words long.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 18, 2019 from 2019-07-18T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of journalist Hunter S. Thompson (1937). After he died, per his request, his ashes were shot from a cannon.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 17, 2019 from 2019-07-17T08:00:15
On this date in 1867, the Harvard Dental School was founded. Prior to the 19th century, people generally went to barbers or blacksmiths to get teeth pulled.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 16, 2019 from 2019-07-16T08:00:13
In 1945 on this day, the first atomic bomb exploded 120 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Officials told citizens that an ammunitions dump had blown up.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 15, 2019 from 2019-07-15T08:00:03
It’s the birthday of the philosopher who said “There is nothing outside the text” — Jacques Derrida, born in El Biar, Algeria, 1930.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 14, 2019 from 2019-07-14T08:00:18
On this day in 1789, an angry mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris and liberated the seven prisoners within: four forgers, two “lunatics,” and an aristocrat accused of incest.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 13, 2019 from 2019-07-13T08:00:13
There was a blackout in New York City on this date in 1977. Over 25 hours, more than 1,600 stores were looted, more than a thousand fires were set, and nearly 3,800 looters were arrested.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 12, 2019 from 2019-07-12T08:00:09
Today is the birthday of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904), who wrote under a pseudonym to avoid his father's judgment, and always in green ink, because he believed it was the color of hope.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 11, 2019 from 2019-07-11T08:00:06
"To Kill a Mockingbird" was published on this date in 1960. Harper Lee wasn’t sure how it would be received. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and has sold more than 40 million copies.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 from 2019-07-10T08:00:05
It’s the birthday of short story writer Alice Munro (1931), who won a Nobel Prize in 2013 as well as the 2009 Man Booker International Prize recognizing her lifetime body of work.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 from 2019-07-09T08:00:04
The Declaration of Independence was read to Washington’s troops on this day in 1776. Celebrators smashed a statue of King George III, which was later melted down and turned into bullets.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 8, 2019 from 2019-07-08T08:00:07
It’s the birthday of psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Switzerland, 1926), who outlined the five stages of grief in her book “On Death and Dying” (1969).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 7, 2019 from 2019-07-07T08:00:09
On this day in 1928, sliced bread was sold for the first time after scores of bakers had warned inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder that the idea would never catch on.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 6, 2019 from 2019-07-06T08:00:11
Today is the birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama (1935), born Lhamo Thondup, who was discovered as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama when he was 2 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 5, 2019 from 2019-07-05T08:00:08
It’s the birthday of Polish-French musician Wanda Landowska (1879), known as the “rediscoverer of the harpsichord” for reviving interest in the instrument.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 4, 2019 from 2019-07-04T08:00:14
On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, though the document was approved and signed two days earlier.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 from 2019-07-03T08:00:22
It’s the birthday of Franz Kafka (1883), described by a lover as being “always cheerful. He liked to play; he was a born playmate, always ready for some fun."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 from 2019-07-02T08:00:22
It’s the birthday of civil rights activist, lawyer, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908), known especially for his ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 1, 2019 from 2019-07-01T08:00:23
On this day in 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman portable cassette player. It weighed 14 ounces and had two headphone jacks so you could listen with a friend.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 30, 2019 from 2019-06-30T08:00:07
On this day 83 years ago, Margaret Mitchell's novel “Gone With the Wind” was published. Three years later, it was made into a movie that became the highest-grossing film of all time.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 29, 2019 from 2019-06-29T08:00:21
It was on this day in 1956 that President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act, which established the Interstate Highway System. It cost more than $100 billion, about three times the initial b...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 28, 2019 from 2019-06-28T08:00:05
It was on this date in 1928 that a 26-year-old Louis Armstrong and his band, the Hot Five, recorded "West End Blues." One night, an audience was so enraptured by the song that they carried Armstron...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 27, 2019 from 2019-06-27T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of Helen Keller (1880), an activist who helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. She was also a socialist who supported Communist Russia, which prompted the FBI to open a ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 26, 2019 from 2019-06-26T08:00:20
On this day in 1974, the first Universal Product Code was scanned at a supermarket cash register. The first scan was made at a Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, which had agreed to serve as a test...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 25, 2019 from 2019-06-25T08:00:07
It’s the birthday of Eric Carle (1929), author and illustrator of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” which has sold almost 50 million copies and which is purchased somewhere in the world every 30 seconds.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 24, 2019 from 2019-06-24T08:00:18
It's the anniversary of the first exhibition of Picasso's work in Paris (1901). Picasso, then 19, had already produced hundreds of paintings, but he was unknown outside of Barcelona. Reviews were f...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 23, 2019 from 2019-06-23T08:00:23
On this day in 1868, the first typewriter was patented by Christopher Latham Sholes. It only had capital letters and it took up as much room as a large table.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 22, 2019 from 2019-06-22T08:00:12
On this day in 1944, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, or the GI Bill, became law. It provided education, unemployment pay, and low-interest loans to returning veterans.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 21, 2019 from 2019-06-21T08:00:05
It's the birthday of philosopher, existentialist, and literary critic Jean-Paul Sartre (1905)––also a well-known prankster who sometimes showed up naked to official functions.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 20, 2019 from 2019-06-20T08:00:19
Today is the birthday of poet Paul Muldoon (1951), who was convinced that he got his job at the BBC because he poured tea for everyone at the interview.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 from 2019-06-19T08:00:18
Today is Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, dating back to 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 18, 2019 from 2019-06-18T08:00:08
It's the birthday of Paul McCartney (1942), who saw 15-year-old John Lennon perform at a church festival and soon joined his band The Quarrymen.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 17, 2019 from 2019-06-17T08:00:04
It was on this day in 1901 that the first standardized tests were administered by the College Board to 973 students at 67 locations, plus two in Europe.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 16, 2019 from 2019-06-16T08:00:11
Today is Father’s Day and it is also Bloomsday: a holiday that commemorates the day on which the events of James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” take place.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 15, 2019 from 2019-06-15T08:00:18
It’s the birthday of writer Ilene Beckerman (1935), whose memoir “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” was turned into a play by sisters Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 14, 2019 from 2019-06-14T08:00:19
Today is the birthday of writer Diablo Cody (1978), who wrote the screenplay for the breakout hit “Juno” (2007) in the Starbucks of a Target store in Minneapolis.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 13, 2019 from 2019-06-13T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of poet, Irish Nationalist, and mystical enthusiast William Butler Yeats (1895), who said, “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, po...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 12, 2019 from 2019-06-12T08:00:16
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals…I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”
–Anne Frank, born this day in 1929
The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 from 2019-06-11T08:00:10
“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.”
–Richard Strauss, born this day in 1864
The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 10, 2019 from 2019-06-10T08:00:23
On this day in 1881, Leo Tolstoy set off on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Optina-Pustyn monastery, wearing homemade bark shoes that left his feet covered in blisters.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 9, 2019 from 2019-06-09T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of Cole Porter (1891), who wrote such recognizable Broadway songs as "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," and "Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 8, 2019 from 2019-06-08T08:00:22
It’s the birthday of crime novelist Sara Peretsky (1947), who broke the “femme fatale” stereotype by creating a female protagonist who was well-rounded and “sexual without being evil.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, June 7, 2019 from 2019-06-07T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of novelist Louise Erdrich (1954), who once said, “If you value your relationships with your children, you can't write about them.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, June 6, 2019 from 2019-06-06T08:00:06
The Great Seattle Fire destroyed downtown Seattle on this date in 1889. Once rebuilt, Seattle was reborn from a town of 25,000 to a city of 40,000.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 from 2019-06-05T08:00:03
On this day in 1977––forty-two years ago––the Apple II computer went on sale. It was the first successful mass-produced microcomputer for home use.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 from 2019-06-04T08:00:06
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, wherein the Chinese government leveled military tanks and troops against students and workers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, June 3, 2019 from 2019-06-03T08:00:06
It’s the birthday of Kathleen Woodiwiss (1939), who set the template for the historical romance novel as we know it today. Her first novel sold 600,000 copies upon its publication in 1972.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, June 2, 2019 from 2019-06-02T08:00:03
On this day in 1692, the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened in Salem Town, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem Witch Trials.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, June 1, 2019 from 2019-06-01T08:00:11
It’s the birthday of Marilyn Monroe (1926), who was “discovered” by photographers while working in an airplane factory during World War II. They persuaded her to become a model.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 31, 2019 from 2019-05-31T08:00:03
It’s the birthday of Walt Whitman (1819), who first published “Leaves of Grass” in 1855, and who kept revising and reissuing it until 1891, the year before he died.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 30, 2019 from 2019-05-30T08:00:10
On this day in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated. The monument has 36 marble columns: one for each state in the union at the time of Lincoln's assassination.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 from 2019-05-29T08:00:03
The world premiere of the ballet “The Rite of Spring” caused a riot on this day in 1913. The audience members who weren't thrown out threw vegetables at the orchestra.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 from 2019-05-28T08:00:17
On this day in 1830, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law. About 100,000 Native Americans were forcibly marched thousands of miles to lands undesirable to white colonizers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 27, 2019 from 2019-05-27T08:00:23
It was on this day in 1937 that the Golden Gate Bridge opened to the public. 18,000 people showed up to cross the bridge; many tap-danced the whole way.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 26, 2019 from 2019-05-26T08:00:10
Today’s the birthday of documentary photographer Dorothea Lange (1895), best known for her Depression-era photo “Migrant Mother, Nipoma, California, 1936.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 25, 2019 from 2019-05-25T08:00:13
It’s the birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803), who not only wrote about his philosophies but also gave more than 1,500 speeches in his lifetime.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 24, 2019 from 2019-05-24T08:00:18
Today is the birthday of Michael Chabon (1963), who based his 2000 novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” on his childhood love of comic books.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 23, 2019 from 2019-05-23T08:00:23
It’s the birthday of Margaret Wise Brown (1910), who wrote “Goodnight Moon” and who famously told a reporter she did not particularly like children.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 from 2019-05-22T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of Arthur Conan Doyle (1859), who wrote 56 short stories and four novels starring his character Sherlock Holmes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 21, 2019 from 2019-05-21T08:00:11
“If paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay."
–Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross on this day in 1881
The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 20, 2019 from 2019-05-20T08:00:18
It was on this day in 1873 that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a patent for the pants that came to be known as blue jeans.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 19, 2019 from 2019-05-19T08:00:15
It’s the birthday of civil rights leader Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925. His autobiography was almost finished when he was assassinated in 1965.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 18, 2019 from 2019-05-18T08:00:17
On this day in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor of France. Beethoven, who had drafted a symphony in Bonaparte’s honor, changed his mind and tore the score in half.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 17, 2019 from 2019-05-17T08:00:10
The Supreme Court ruled that school segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment on this date in 1954, overturning the precedent that had been set with Plessy v. Ferguson.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 16, 2019 from 2019-05-16T08:00:20
It’s the birthday of Liberace (1919), who replied to his critics, “Thank you for your very amusing review. After reading it, in fact, my brother George and I laughed all the way to the bank.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 15, 2019 from 2019-05-15T08:00:17
It’s the birthday of L. Frank Baum (1856), who depicted an explicitly socialist society in his children’s novel, “The Wizard of Oz.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 14, 2019 from 2019-05-14T08:00:20
It was on this day in 1925 that Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novel “Mrs Dalloway” was published. The entire novel is set on a single day in June, just like James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 13, 2019 from 2019-05-13T08:00:23
It was on this day in 1958 that Velcro was patented. The inventor, Georges de Mestral, was inspired by burrs stuck to his dog’s fur, observing that each bristle was a tiny hook.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 12, 2019 from 2019-05-12T08:00:17
It was on this day in 1935 that the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous first met, in Akron, Ohio. Four years later, one of them wrote the handbook that would accompany the 12-step program.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 11, 2019 from 2019-05-11T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of painter Salvador Dalí (1904), who had a long waxed mustache and who sometimes walked down the street ringing a bell so that people would look at him.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 10, 2019 from 2019-05-10T08:00:11
It was on this day in 1893 that the Supreme Court ruled that the tomato was a vegetable, not a fruit. “Vegetable" has no actual scientific or botanical definition; it’s a culinary term.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 9, 2019 from 2019-05-09T08:00:14
It was on this day in 1994 that Nelson Mandela was elected first president of a democratic South Africa, having served 27 years in prison for his political opposition to apartheid government.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 8, 2019 from 2019-05-08T08:00:07
On this day in 1886, the first glass of Coca-Cola, which originally contained cocaine, was sold for 5 cents at a soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, GA.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 from 2019-05-07T08:00:14
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony premiered on this day in 1924. By that point, Beethoven had lost his hearing, and the musicians followed a man who was conducting slightly offstage.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, May 6, 2019 from 2019-05-06T08:00:19
On this day in 1935, FDR created the Works Progress Administration, which over the next eight years employed 8.5 million out-of-work people.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, May 5, 2019 from 2019-05-05T08:00:11
Today is Cinco de Mayo, commemorating the 1862 battle when 8,000 well-armed French troops were routed by 4,000 ill-equipped Mexican soldiers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, May 4, 2019 from 2019-05-04T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of the father of American public education, Horace Mann (1796), who said, “Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark, all is deluge.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, May 3, 2019 from 2019-05-03T08:00:16
“You choose to be a novelist but you’re chosen to be a poet. This is a gift and it’s a tremendous responsibility.”
–May Sarton, born this day in 1912
The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, May 2, 2019 from 2019-05-02T08:00:13
On this day in 2000, President Clinton made Global Positioning System, or GPS, technology freely available for use outside the military.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 from 2019-05-01T08:00:04
On this day in 1956, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was made available to the public. Today, polio has been largely eradicated from most countries.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 30, 2019 from 2019-04-30T08:00:08
In 1803 on this day, the United States bought France’s claim to the Louisiana Territory, for the price of $15 million: less than 3 cents per acre.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 29, 2019 from 2019-04-29T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of Duke Ellington (1899), who said jazz is “the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 28, 2019 from 2019-04-28T08:00:07
Today is the birthday of Nell Harper Lee (Monroeville, AL, 1926), author of “To Kill A Mockingbird” and childhood friend of Truman Persons, who grew up to be Truman Capote.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 27, 2019 from 2019-04-27T08:00:20
Today’s the birthday of playwright August Wilson (1945), who dropped out of school after his teacher wrongly accused him of plagiarism, and went on to write plays such as “Fences.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 26, 2019 from 2019-04-26T08:00:10
It’s the birthday of John James Audubon (1785), who set out on a journey to draw all the birds of North America. The resulting book was two feet wide and three feet tall.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 25, 2019 from 2019-04-25T08:00:16
On this day in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published a paper that described the structure of DNA and concluded that the shape suggested a copying mechanism for genetic material.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 24, 2019 from 2019-04-24T08:00:06
Today is the birthday of the late Sue Grafton (1940), who took her inspiration for her alphabetically-titled murder mystery series from Edward Gorey’s “The Ghastlycrumb Tinies.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 from 2019-04-23T08:00:16
It’s the assumed birthday of William Shakespeare (1564), who originated idioms such as "dead as a doornail," “come what may,” “heart’s content,” “night owl,” and “into thin air.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 22, 2019 from 2019-04-22T08:00:22
Today is Earth Day, which was first observed in 1970. The theme in 2000 was using clean energy to combat climate change, and this year’s theme is protecting species.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 21, 2019 from 2019-04-21T08:00:12
It’s the birthday of novelist Charlotte Brontë (1816), who wrote, "I would always rather be happy than dignified."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 20, 2019 from 2019-04-20T08:00:22
It was on this day in 1939 that Billie Holiday recorded the song "Strange Fruit," which begins, “Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 19, 2019 from 2019-04-19T08:00:12
It was on this day in 1927 that actress Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in prison for her starring role in the play Sex, which she also wrote and directed.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 18, 2019 from 2019-04-18T08:00:04
It's the birthday of the man who gave his name to CliffsNotes: Clifton Keith Hillegass, born in Rising City, Nebraska, in 1918.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 17, 2019 from 2019-04-17T08:00:14
“Whan than Aprill, with his shoures soote…”
According to legend, it was on this day in 1397 that Geoffrey Chaucer recited The Canterbury Tales to the court of Richard II.
The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 16, 2019 from 2019-04-16T08:00:21
It was on this day in 1852 that the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev was arrested for writing an obituary for Nikolai Gogol.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 15, 2019 from 2019-04-15T08:00:10
It was on this day in 1912 that the RMS Titanic sank. There were 2,228 people on board and only 705 people survived.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 14, 2019 from 2019-04-14T08:00:14
On this day in 1865, five days after General Lee’s surrender, President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. He died the next morning.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 13, 2019 from 2019-04-13T08:00:14
It’s the birthday of founding father Thomas Jefferson (Virginia, 1743), who kept exhaustive notes on the states of his turnips, lettuces, artichokes, tomatoes, eggplants, and squash.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 12, 2019 from 2019-04-12T08:00:18
It's the birthday of Jon Krakauer (1954), who based “Into the Wild” on the true story of a college graduate who changed his name, walked into the Alaskan wilderness to start anew, and perished 4 mo...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 11, 2019 from 2019-04-11T08:00:23
It’s the birthday of Leo Rosten (Poland, 1908), whose book “The Joys of Yiddish,” contains humorous entries on words like “oy,” and “chutzpah,” and scenarios in which to say “feh.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 from 2019-04-10T08:00:06
On this day in 1912 the Titanic set sail from Southampton, England with 2,228 passengers and life boats for only half that many.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 9, 2019 from 2019-04-09T08:00:13
On this day in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to the General of the United States Armies, Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the Civil War.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 8, 2019 from 2019-04-08T08:00:17
It's the birthday of novelist Barbara Kingsolver, who grew up in a house in an alfalfa field in rural Kentucky, where her dad was the county doctor.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, April 7, 2019 from 2019-04-07T08:00:22
It’s the birthday of singer Billie Holiday (Baltimore, 1915), who put an original spin on jazz classics, and who wrote songs including “God Bless the Child.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, April 6, 2019 from 2019-04-06T08:00:07
It’s the birthday of Sacajawea, born around 1789 in what became known as Idaho, who spoke about 6 languages, and who accompanied Lewis & Clark to the Pacific.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, April 5, 2019 from 2019-04-05T08:00:13
It’s the birthday of surgeon Joseph Lister (1827), who pioneered the revolutionary practice of hand-washing at hospitals.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, April 4, 2019 from 2019-04-04T08:00:17
On this day in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, the day after delivering his famous “mountaintop” speech.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 from 2019-04-03T08:00:20
On this day in 1948, President Harry Truman signed the European Recovery Program (also known as the Marshall Plan) into law in the wake of World War II.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 from 2019-04-02T08:00:06
It's the birthday of fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805), who originally wanted to be an actor, but he began writing when a colleague called him a poet.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, April 1, 2019 from 2019-04-01T08:00:04
Apple was founded on this date in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, who later sold his stock for about $2,000.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 31, 2019 from 2019-03-31T08:00:10
On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated. A petition of 300 names decried the tower as being ”useless" and a “monstrosity."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 30, 2019 from 2019-03-30T08:00:17
On this day in 1858, Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia patented the first pencil to have an attached eraser.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 29, 2019 from 2019-03-29T08:00:20
On this day in 1886, the first batch of Coca-Cola was brewed in a backyard in Georgia. The key ingredients were cocaine and caffeine.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 28, 2019 from 2019-03-28T08:00:09
It’s the birthday of novelist Lauren Weisberger (1977), who turned her experience as assistant to Vogue editor-in-chief into the book “The Devil Wears Prada.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 from 2019-03-27T08:00:17
Today is the birthday of the woman who wrote the song “Happy Birthday to You”: Patty Smith Hill (1868).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 from 2019-03-26T08:00:22
It's the birthday of Robert Frost (1874), who said, "A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 25, 2019 from 2019-03-25T08:00:21
"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
––Gloria Steinem, born this day in 1934
The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 24, 2019 from 2019-03-24T08:00:05
Today is the birthday of Fanny Crosby (1820), who wrote between 3,000 and 8,000 hymns during her lifetime, including "Blessed Assurance."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 23, 2019 from 2019-03-23T08:00:11
It's the birthday of Fannie Merritt Farmer (1857), who published the first American cookbook that came with simple, precise cooking instructions.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 22, 2019 from 2019-03-22T08:00:08
It’s the birthday of translator Edith Grossman (1936), who translated Don Quixote and many of Gabriel García Marquez’s books.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 21, 2019 from 2019-03-21T08:00:10
It's the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685), who, as a teenage organist, criticized the choir, took prolonged absences, and got in fights with bassoonists.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 from 2019-03-20T08:00:15
The vernal equinox occurs today for the northern hemisphere, the time when the earth's axis is aligned with the center of the sun.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 from 2019-03-19T08:00:16
Sixteen years ago on this day, President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the Iraq War.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 18, 2019 from 2019-03-18T08:00:16
The "Gardner Heist" took place this day in 1990, carried out by a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers with fake mustaches.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 17, 2019 from 2019-03-17T08:00:19
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, a feast day honoring the patron saint of Ireland, who actually was born in England and was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a child.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 16, 2019 from 2019-03-16T08:00:04
It’s the birthday of comedian Henny Youngman (1906), whose one-liners included, "I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 15, 2019 from 2019-03-15T08:00:08
The first Internet domain name was registered on this date in 1985. That year, 5 more .com domains were registered. Today, there are over 330 million.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 14, 2019 from 2019-03-14T08:00:13
"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
–Albert Einstein, born this day in 1879
The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 from 2019-03-13T08:00:16
Today is the birthday of journalist Janet Flanner (1892), who wrote the “Letter from Paris” feature for the New Yorker for 50 years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 from 2019-03-12T08:00:21
It’s the birthday of writer Dave Eggers (Boston, 1970), founder of “The Believer” and “McSweeney’s” magazines.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 11, 2019 from 2019-03-11T08:00:03
It was on this day in 1818 that Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" was published, inspired by a ghost story she had told her friends two summers before.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 10, 2019 from 2019-03-10T08:00:13
It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call. He advised saying “Ahoy!” instead of “hello,” and “that’s all” instead of “goodbye.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 9, 2019 from 2019-03-09T09:00:11
It’s the birthday of Vita Sackville-West (1892), who wrote eight novels and five plays before turning 19. She was the inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 8, 2019 from 2019-03-08T09:00:15
Today's episode features a poem about maple syrup (the second of that type of poem we've featured this week!) by Laura Davies Foley, called "It Is Time."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, March 7, 2019 from 2019-03-07T09:00:18
It's the anniversary of the first march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965), known as "Bloody Sunday." TV footage of policemen attacking the marchers helped to shift national public opinion on...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, March 6, 2019 from 2019-03-06T09:00
It's the birthday of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist who said, "I've always been convinced that my true profession is that of journalist”: Gabriel García Márquez (1927).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, March 5, 2019 from 2019-03-05T09:00
It's the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which took place on a cold and snowy night in 1770. John Adams was the lawyer who took on the case of the British soldiers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, March 4, 2019 from 2019-03-04T09:00
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated on this day in 1933, and his address included the famous phrase, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, March 3, 2019 from 2019-03-03T09:00
It’s the birthday of Ira Glass (1959), who launched the public radio program “This American Life” (originally called “Your Radio Playhouse”) in 1995.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, March 2, 2019 from 2019-03-02T09:00
It’s the birthday of Dr. Seuss (1904), who once said, "Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, March 1, 2019 from 2019-03-01T09:00
On this date in 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, for her role in Gone With the Wind.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 28, 2019 from 2019-02-28T09:00
It's the birthday of Michel de Montaigne (Bordeaux, France, 1533), considered by many to be the creator of the personal essay.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 27, 2019 from 2019-02-27T09:00
It was on this date in 1860 that presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln gave a speech against slavery at Cooper Union in New York City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 26, 2019 from 2019-02-26T09:00
It’s the birthday of Elizabeth George (1949), creator of the Inspector Lynley series and arguably the greatest mystery novelist alive today.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 25, 2019 from 2019-02-25T09:00
It’s the birthday of Anthony Burgess (1962), who wrote A Clockwork Orange as well as many other books, including two about James Joyce.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 24, 2019 from 2019-02-24T09:00
It’s the birthday of the late Steve Jobs (1955), who said, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 23, 2019 from 2019-02-23T09:00
It was on this day in 1940 that Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land" — now one of America's most famous folk songs.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 22, 2019 from 2019-02-22T09:00
It’s the birthday of George Washington (1732), whose inaugural address was the shortest in history: 133 words long, and it took him just 90 seconds to deliver.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 21, 2019 from 2019-02-21T09:00
The Communist Manifesto, which proclaimed that "the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,” was first published on this day in 1848.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 from 2019-02-20T09:00
It was on this day in 1877 that Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake premiered in Moscow. It was Tchaikovsky's first ballet, and it got bad reviews.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 from 2019-02-19T09:00
It's the birthday of writer Amy Tan (1952), who wrote a book of short stories in the span of about four months that became the bestseller The Joy Luck Club.
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The Writer's Almanac -Monday, February 18, 2019 from 2019-02-18T09:00
It's the birthday of novelist Toni Morrison (1931), whose mother always sang while she did chores, everything from opera arias to the blues.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 17, 2019 from 2019-02-17T09:00
It was on this day in 1913 that the Armory Show opened in New York City, the first comprehensive exhibition of modern art in this country. The exhibit featured works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 16, 2019 from 2019-02-16T09:00
On this date in 1937, Wallace Carothers and DuPont Chemical Company were granted a patent for the synthetic polymer called nylon.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 15, 2019 from 2019-02-15T09:00
On this date in 2001, a working draft of the human genome was published. Scientists had expected to find that humans had more than 100,000 genes, but we have only about 20,000.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 14, 2019 from 2019-02-14T09:00
For Valentine’s Day, a few excerpts of love letters from famous authors, and a poem by Connie Wanek, “First Love.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 from 2019-02-13T09:00
Today is the birthday of American religious historian Elaine Pagels (1943), whose work The Gnostic Gospels was named one of the best 100 books of the 20th century.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 from 2019-02-12T09:00
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born this day in 1809. Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (1859) came out the year before Lincoln was elected president.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 11, 2019 from 2019-02-11T09:00
It was on this day in 1990 that Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison, outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years behind bars.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 10, 2019 from 2019-02-10T09:00
It’s the birthday of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898), who said, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 9, 2019 from 2019-02-09T09:00
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 8, 2019 from 2019-02-08T09:00
It was on this day in 1910 that the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated as a youth organization in the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, February 7, 2019 from 2019-02-07T09:00
It’s the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867), whose books have all remained in print since the time they were first published.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, February 6, 2019 from 2019-02-06T09:00
It’s the birthday of journalist Michael Pollan (1955), whose newest book explores not food but the benefit of psychedelics.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 from 2019-02-05T09:00
Charlie Chaplin’s movie “Modern Times” opened in New York on this day in 1936. It was the only film to include Chaplin’s voice.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, February 4, 2019 from 2019-02-04T09:00
Fifteen years ago today, Mark Zuckerberg launched the website for Facebook (then called “The Facebook”).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, February 3, 2019 from 2019-02-03T09:00
It’s the birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell (1821), who became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States; her sister Emily was the third.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, February 2, 2019 from 2019-02-02T09:00
310 years ago today, the Scottish sailor who inspired “Robinson Crusoe” was rescued from the island where he had been marooned for four years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, February 1, 2019 from 2019-02-01T09:00
Today is the birthday of the poet Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, who became a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 31, 2019 from 2019-01-31T09:00
It’s the birthday of writer, translator, synesthete, and guy-who-can-recite-pi-by-memory Daniel Tammet (1979).
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 from 2019-01-30T09:00
Today is the anniversary of Bloody Sunday (1972), the day on which the British army shot 27 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 from 2019-01-29T09:00
It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” was published, a poem that Abraham Lincoln memorized.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 28, 2019 from 2019-01-28T09:00
It was on this day in 1754 that the word "serendipity,” meaning "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for,” was first coined.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 27, 2019 from 2019-01-27T09:00
It's the birthday of Mozart (1756), who said, "Music, in even the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear but always remain a source of pleasure."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 26, 2019 from 2019-01-26T09:00
On this day in 1784, Ben Franklin wrote about his displeasure at the choice of bald eagle as the symbol of America, calling it a “Bird of bad moral Character.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 25, 2019 from 2019-01-25T09:00
Today is the birthday of the late Etta James (Los Angeles, 1938). She recorded a version of “At Last” in 1960, and it remained her signature song throughout her life.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 24, 2019 from 2019-01-24T09:00
It’s the birthday of Edith Wharton (1862), who was the first woman to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, for her novel The Age of Innocence.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 from 2019-01-23T09:00
It was on this day in 1977 that the miniseries Roots premiered on ABC. Restaurants and shops cleared out while it was showing, and bars showed it on their TVs in order to keep customers there.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 from 2019-01-22T09:00
Today is the birthday of British Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788), who was called “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” by one of his many lovers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 21, 2019 from 2019-01-21T09:00
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a national holiday that Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1983, following years of activists' petitions, conferences, and advocacy.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 20, 2019 from 2019-01-20T09:00
It’s the birthday of the late Susan Vreeland (1946), whose novels, such as “Girl in Hyacinth Blue,” intersected with alternate histories of art.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 19, 2019 from 2019-01-19T09:00
Today is the birthday of Edwidge Danticat (Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1969), author of Krik? Krack! and the upcoming short story collection Everything Inside.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 18, 2019 from 2019-01-18T09:00
It’s the birthday of Rubén Darío (1867), a great poet in the Spanish-speaking world who is barely known to English speakers.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 17, 2019 from 2019-01-17T09:00
Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” premiered on this day in 1904. He had meant for it to be a comedy, and was annoyed that the director had presented it as a tragedy.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 from 2019-01-16T09:00
On this day in 1605, Book One of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” was published. The novel remains the most-translated book in the world after the Bible.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 from 2019-01-15T09:00
“If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
–Martin Luther King, Jr., born this day in Atlanta, 1929
The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 14, 2019 from 2019-01-14T09:00
It’s the birthday of Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Maureen Dowd (1951), who said, "The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 13, 2019 from 2019-01-13T09:00
It’s the birthday of the author who created Paddington Bear: that’s Michael Bond, born Newbury, England, in 1926.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 12, 2019 from 2019-01-12T09:00
Today is the birthday of writer Haruki Murakami (1949), whose most recent novel, Killing Commendatore, was released in the U.S. this past October.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 11, 2019 from 2019-01-11T09:00
It’s the birthday of psychologist William James (1842), who said, "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 10, 2019 from 2019-01-10T09:00
It was on this day in 1776 that a 77-page pamphlet called "Common Sense" was published. It made the case that the American colonies should declare independence from Great Britain.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 from 2019-01-09T09:00
Today is the 18th birthday of Apple’s iTunes and the 12th birthday of the iPhone! Both were announced on this day, one in 2001 and the other in 2007.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 from 2019-01-08T09:00
It’s the birthday of the late Stephen Hawking (1942), who said, "My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, January 7, 2019 from 2019-01-07T09:00
It’s the birthday of writer Zora Neale Hurston (1891), best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, January 6, 2019 from 2019-01-06T09:00
It’s the birthday of author Elizabeth Strout (1956), whose short story collection Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 and was turned into an HBO mini-series in 2014.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, January 5, 2019 from 2019-01-05T09:00
It was on this day in 2007 that the man who invented instant ramen and Cup Noodles, Momofuku Ando, died at the age of 96.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, January 4, 2019 from 2019-01-04T09:00
It's the birthday of Louis Braille (1809), who invented a system of six raised dots that could be read by blind people such as himself.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, January 3, 2019 from 2019-01-03T09:00
On this date in 1870, work began on the Brooklyn Bridge. At least 20 workers died during its construction.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, January 2, 2019 from 2019-01-02T09:00
On this date in 1974, President Nixon signed a law setting the national speed limit at 55 miles per hour, a response to increased fuel prices.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, January 1, 2019 from 2019-01-01T09:00
It's the birthday of J.D. Salinger (New York, 1919), who famously despised being a celebrity and opted to be a recluse until his death in 2010.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 31, 2018 from 2018-12-31T09:00
It’s the birthday of artist Henri Matisse (1869), who called his late-life collage technique “painting with scissors.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 30, 2018 from 2018-12-30T09:00
It’s the birthday of poet, memoirist, and punk rock icon Patti Smith, whose 1975 album Horses begins: “Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 29, 2018 from 2018-12-29T09:00
On this day in 1890, US federal soldiers massacred 300 native men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 28, 2018 from 2018-12-28T09:00
It’s the birthday of the late Stan Lee, who wrote comic book characters who were “fallible and feisty” as opposed to perfect.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 27, 2018 from 2018-12-27T09:00
It’s the birthday of Chris Abani, who at age 17 was jailed by the Nigerian government for writing a novel that supposedly inspired an attempted coup.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 26, 2018 from 2018-12-26T09:00
Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, an African-American and Pan-African cultural holiday first celebrated in 1966.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 25, 2018 from 2018-12-25T09:00
On this day in 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft returned to a course for Earth after orbiting the moon 10 times over 20 hours.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 24, 2018 from 2018-12-24T09:00
It's the birthday of Dana Gioia, whose 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016) won the 2018 Poets’ Prize, an award for the best book of verse by a living American poet.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 23, 2018 from 2018-12-23T09:00
On this day in 1823, a poem entitled “A Visit from St. Nicholas”—which begins “’Twas the night before Christmas…”—was anonymously published in the Troy Sentinel in New York City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 22, 2018 from 2018-12-22T18:47
It’s the birthday of composer Giacomo Puccini (1858), who created some of the most popular operas of all time including La bohème and Tosca.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 21, 2018 from 2018-12-21T09:00
On this day in 1937, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in Los Angeles, California. It was the first feature-length cartoon and the first to be produced in the new Technicolor.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 20, 2018 from 2018-12-20T09:00
It’s the birthday of Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne (1865), who turned down marriage proposals from poet William Butler Yeats several times over the course of their lifelong friendship.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 from 2018-12-19T09:00
It’s the birthday of French singer Édith Piaf (1915), who was nicknamed “the little sparrow” for her height—she was under 4’10” tall.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 from 2018-12-18T09:00
It was on this day in 1892 that the Nutcracker ballet premiered at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 17, 2018 from 2018-12-17T09:00
The first episode of The Simpsons aired on Fox on this date in 1989 after a successful spat of short segments that had appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 16, 2018 from 2018-12-16T09:00
Today is the birthday of novelist Jane Austen (1775), who said, "I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 15, 2018 from 2018-12-15T09:00
It’s the birthday of writer Edna O’Brien (1930), one of a select number of Irish artists who have been bestowed the honor of Saoi.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 14, 2018 from 2018-12-14T09:00
It’s the birthday of Shirley Jackson (1916), author of morbid short story “The Lottery” and novel-turned-Netflix-hit The Haunting of Hill House.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, December 13, 2018 from 2018-12-13T09:00
It was on this day in 1577 that Sir Francis Drake, described by victims as a very nice pirate, set out to sail around the world.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 from 2018-12-12T09:00
Today is the birthday of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863) who said, “My sufferings…are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 11, 2018 from 2018-12-11T09:00
It's the birthday of Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz (1911), who delivered his acceptance speech in Arabic when he won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 10, 2018 from 2018-12-10T09:00
It's the birthday of poet Emily Dickinson (1830), who grew up very social and only gradually became reclusive.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 9, 2018 from 2018-12-09T09:00
Today is the birthday of John Milton (1608), who coined over 600 words including ethereal, sublime, impassive, terrific, dismissive, anarchy, and fragrance.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 8, 2018 from 2018-12-08T09:00
It’s the birthday of humorist and cartoonist James Thurber (1894), who said, "Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, December 7, 2018 from 2018-12-07T09:00
"We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while."
–Willa Cather, born this day in 1873
The Writer's Almanac- Thursday, December 6, 2018 from 2018-12-06T09:00
Today is St. Nicholas Day; tomorrow, good children around the world will wake up with gifts of sweets, oranges, and nuts in their shoes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 from 2018-12-05T09:00
It's the birthday of the essayist and novelist Joan Didion, who opined, “writers are always selling someone out.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, December 4, 2018 from 2018-12-04T09:00
Today is the birthday of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875), who financed his career as a poet by seducing a series of rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote his books.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, December 3, 2018 from 2018-12-03T09:00
It was on this day in 1839 that 30-year-old Illinois state assemblyman Abraham Lincoln was admitted to practice law in the United States Circuit Court.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, December 2, 2018 from 2018-12-02T09:00
It’s the birthday of novelist Ann Patchett (Los Angeles, 1963), author of Bel Canto and other books, who co-owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, December 1, 2018 from 2018-12-01T09:00
On this date in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. She’d always complied in the past, but this day, she was tired.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 30, 2018 from 2018-11-30T09:00
It's the birthday of the man who said, "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it": Mark Twain (Florida, MO, 1835).
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 29, 2018 from 2018-11-29T09:00
Today is the birthday of three giants of young people’s literature: Louisa May Alcott (1832), C.S. Lewis (1898), and Madeline L’Engle (1918).
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 from 2018-11-28T09:00
It’s the birthday of engraver and poet William Blake (London, 1757), who was dubbed "an unfortunate lunatic" by a contemporary critic.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 from 2018-11-27T09:00
On this day in 1786, Scottish poet Robert Burns borrowed a pony and rode to Edinburgh, and became convinced along the way that he was rather famous.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 26, 2018 from 2018-11-26T09:00
It's the birthday of two beloved American cartoonists: Charles Schultz (St. Paul, 1922) and Roz Chast (Brooklyn, 1954).
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 25, 2018 from 2018-11-25T09:00
It was on this day in 1864 that Confederate rebels set 13 fires in New York City, but they didn’t factor in the need for oxygen to feed the fires, so the damage was negligible.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 24, 2018 from 2018-11-24T09:00
It’s the birthday of mathematician and philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632), who only published three books in his lifetime, afraid he'd be branded a heretic.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 23, 2018 from 2018-11-23T09:00
It’s the birthday of the legendary desperado Billy the Kid, who killed about 27 people during his short lifespan of 21 years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 22, 2018 from 2018-11-22T09:00
Happy Thanksgiving! We are thankful for Marjane Satrapi, André Gide, George Eliot, and all the other writers born this day.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 from 2018-11-21T09:00
It’s the birthday of Voltaire (1694), who wrote, "To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 from 2018-11-20T09:00
On this date in 1820, a sperm whale attacked a whaling ship off the coast of South America, an event that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 19, 2018 from 2018-11-19T09:00
On this date in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, which only ten sentences long and lasted about 2 minutes.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 18, 2018 from 2018-11-18T09:00
It’s the birthday of poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, now a hugely popular online television series.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 17, 2018 from 2018-11-17T09:00
It was on this day in 1558 that Queen Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne, and then reigned for 45 years.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 16, 2018 from 2018-11-16T09:00
It’s the birthday of Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart (1958), which was one of the first novels ever written about European colonization from the point of view of the colonized native peo...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 15, 2018 from 2018-11-15T09:00
It’s the birthday of poet Marianne Moore, who once said, “I never knew anyone with a passion for words who had as much difficulty in saying things as I do.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 14, 2018 from 2018-11-14T09:00
It's the birthday of the artist who said, "I would like to paint the way a bird sings": Claude Monet.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 from 2018-11-13T09:00
It’s the birthday of the man who wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1850).
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 12, 2018 from 2018-11-12T09:00
It was on this day in 1954 that Ellis Island formally closed its doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants to the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 11, 2018 from 2018-11-11T09:00
It’s the birthday of author Kurt Vonnegut (1922), who advised other writers to "Make characters want something right away — even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningle...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 10, 2018 from 2018-11-10T09:00
It was on this day in 1969 that Sesame Street premiered, with the aim to "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them."
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 9, 2018 from 2018-11-09T09:00
It’s the birthday of poet Anne Sexton, who said of her troubled mental health, "My fans think I got well, but I didn't: I just became a poet."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 8, 2018 from 2018-11-08T09:00
It was on this day in 1864 that Abraham Lincoln was elected to his second term as president of the United States, one of the few elections in world history to be held in the middle of a civil war.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, November 7, 2018 from 2018-11-07T09:00
It’s the birthday of scientist Marie Curie (Warsaw, 1867), whose laboratory journals are still too radioactive to handle.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, November 6, 2018 from 2018-11-06T09:00
It's the birthday of the founder of The New Yorker magazine, Harold Ross (1892), who was gap-toothed, messy-haired, and Western-accented.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, November 5, 2018 from 2018-11-05T09:00
On this day in 1930, a Swedish newspaper reporter telephoned Sinclair Lewis to tell him that he had won the Nobel Prize in literature. Lewis thought it was a practical joke and began to imitate the...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, November 4, 2018 from 2018-11-04T09:00
Today is the birthday of cowboy poet and humorist Will Rogers, who once joked, "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, November 3, 2018 from 2018-11-03T08:00
It’s the birthday of photographer Walker Evans, who took some of the best known photos of tenant farmers in the Great Depression.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, November 2, 2018 from 2018-11-02T08:00
On this day in 1960, Penguin Books was acquitted in a British obscenity case regarding D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, November 1, 2018 from 2018-11-01T08:00
On this day in 1938, underdog racing horse Seabiscuit won the “Match of the Century” against the 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 from 2018-10-31T08:00
Today is Halloween, and also the 501st anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of a church.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 30, 2018 from 2018-10-30T08:00
On this day in 1938, a radio dramatization of H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds” caused millions of America to believe aliens were invading.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 29, 2018 from 2018-10-29T08:00
Today is the 89th anniversary of “Black Tuesday,” on which date more than 16 million shares of stock were sold off in a panic in the stock market crash.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 28, 2018 from 2018-10-28T08:00
It was on this day in 1886 that the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled to a huge crowd standing in the cold and rain.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 27, 2018 from 2018-10-27T08:00
It’s the birthday of writer Zadie Smith (1975), who published the critically acclaimed White Teeth when she was just 24 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 26, 2018 from 2018-10-26T08:00
Featuring a poem for school days by Maria Mazziotti Gillan.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 25, 2018 from 2018-10-25T08:00
It’s the birthday of Pablo Picasso, who said, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 from 2018-10-24T08:00
It's the birthday of writer and explorer Alexandra David-Néel (1868), a French woman who adventured across the world and became a Tantric lama at age 52.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 from 2018-10-23T08:00
It's the birthday of Ang Lee (1954), who had not yet mastered the English language when he directed a 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 22, 2018 from 2018-10-22T08:00
It's the birthday of composer Franz Liszt (1811), whose frenzied fans inspired the term ”Lisztomania."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 21, 2018 from 2018-10-21T08:00
It’s the birthday of the late actress and author Carrie Fisher, who said of her hypothetical obituary, “I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra."
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 20, 2018 from 2018-10-20T08:00
It's the birthday of the poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854), who wrote all of his poetry in the space of less than five years, from age 15 to 20.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 19, 2018 from 2018-10-19T08:00
It’s the birthday of Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, who said, “Don't write about yourself — you aren't as interesting as you think."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 18, 2018 from 2018-10-18T08:00
It was on this day in 1851 that Moby-Dick was first published, in beautiful bindings decorated with paintings of the wrong type of whale.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 from 2018-10-17T08:00
It's the birthday of Shinichi Suzuki (1898), who developed a way of teaching very young children to play classical music by listening and imitating.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 from 2018-10-16T08:00
It’s the birthday of Oscar Wilde (Dublin, 1854), who said, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 15, 2018 from 2018-10-15T08:00
It's the birthday of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844), who said both "God is dead" and "[W]e should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 14, 2018 from 2018-10-14T08:00
It's the birthday of poet E.E. Cummings (1894), who spent his adulthood painting in the afternoons and writing in the evenings.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 13, 2018 from 2018-10-13T08:00
It's the birthday of singer-songwriter Paul Simon (1941), who played the last show of his farewell tour last month in his hometown of Queens, New York.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 12, 2018 from 2018-10-12T08:00
"Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way."
–Alice Childress, born this day in 1916
The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 11, 2018 from 2018-10-11T08:00
It's the birthday of French novelist François Mauriac (1885), who regularly engaged in celebrity feuds with the likes of Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and others.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 from 2018-10-10T08:00
Today we celebrate the birthdays of composers Thelonious Monk (1917), Vernon Duke (1903), and Giuseppe Verdi (1813).
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 9, 2018 from 2018-10-09T08:00
It was on this day in 1635 that Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for spreading "newe and dangerous opinions." He left and founded Providence, Rhode Island.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 8, 2018 from 2018-10-08T08:00
It's the birthday of the science fiction author Frank Herbert (1920), who wrote the Dune series.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, October 7, 2018 from 2018-10-07T08:00
It's the birthday of Diane Ackerman, whose books blend science, history, and literature. She even has a molecule named after her: dianeackerone.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, October 6, 2018 from 2018-10-06T08:00
On this date in 1927, the release of The Jazz Singer marked the beginning of the end for silent movies. It wasn't the first movie with sound, but it was the first to include talking along with the ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, October 5, 2018 from 2018-10-05T08:00
It was on this day in 1970 that the Public Broadcasting Service was founded in America "for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, October 4, 2018 from 2018-10-04T08:00
Today is the birthday of Edward L. Stratemeyer, one of the first American writers to capitalize on universal primary education by writing children's adventure series such as the Hardy Boys.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, October 3, 2018 from 2018-10-03T08:00
On this date in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found unkempt and delirious outside a pub in Baltimore. No one knows what had happened to him, and he died four days later.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, October 2, 2018 from 2018-10-02T08:00
On this day in 1950, Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts was first published. Schulz began every morning with a jelly doughnut, sitting down to think of an idea that might come after minutes or...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, October 1, 2018 from 2018-10-01T08:00
It's the birthday of novelist Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried, who said, "A true war story is never moral."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 30, 2018 from 2018-09-30T08:00
On this day in 1949, the Berlin Airlift ended after more than a year of delivering food to West Berliners.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 29, 2018 from 2018-09-29T08:00
Today we celebrate the birthday of Miguel de Cervantes, author of what is considered to be the first modern novel: Don Quixote.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 28, 2018 from 2018-09-28T08:00
Today is the birthday of real-life scrivener and alchemist Nicholas Flamel (1300), known to millennials as the 600-year-old friend of Albus Dumbledore.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 27, 2018 from 2018-09-27T08:00
It's the birthday of Scottish writer Irvine Welsh (1958). His first novel, Trainspotting (1993), was an instant cult classic that was made into a very popular movie.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 from 2018-09-26T08:00
It's the birthday of poet T. S. Eliot (1888), who managed to finish both his undergraduate work and master's degree in just four years at Harvard University.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 from 2018-09-25T08:00
On this day in 1957, nine African-American students were successfully registered at Little Rock Central High School, breaking the state's longstanding policy of segregation.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 24, 2018 from 2018-09-24T08:00
It's the birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896), whose daughter said, "People who live entirely by the fertility of their imaginations are fascinating, brilliant and often charming, but they should...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 23, 2018 from 2018-09-23T08:00
It's the birthday of the dramatic poet Euripides, whose contemporaries made fun of him for enjoying solitude and for writing in a large, 10-chambered cave now known as the Cave of Euripides.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 22, 2018 from 2018-09-22T08:00
It was on this day in 1888 that the first issue of National Geographic was published. Photographs were included later as a way to fill extra pages.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 21, 2018 from 2018-09-21T08:00
It's the birthday of prolific horror writer Stephen King (Portland, Maine, 1947), who said, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 20, 2018 from 2018-09-20T08:00
It's the birthday of one of the greatest editors of the 20th century, Maxwell Perkins (1884). His first big success at Scribner's was his decision to publish a manuscript by a young man named F. Sc...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 from 2018-09-19T08:00
On this day in 1982, computer scientist Scott Fahlman suggested on an online bulletin board that the users type a colon, a hyphen, and a closing parenthesis when their post was intended as a joke. :-)
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 18, 2018 from 2018-09-18T10:00
It was on this day in 1851 that the first edition of The New York Times was published. Its original name was The New-York Daily Times, and each copy cost one cent.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 17, 2018 from 2018-09-17T10:00
Today is the birthday of Ken Kesey (1935), author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 16, 2018 from 2018-09-16T10:00
It's the birthday of Curious George creator H. A. Rey, who escaped Paris on a pair of bicycles with wife and collaborator Margret Rey just before the Nazi invasion in June 1940.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 15, 2018 from 2018-09-15T10:00
It was on this day in 1835 that the passengers and crew of the HMS Beagle, including 26-year-old Charles Darwin, reached the Galapagos Islands.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 14, 2018 from 2018-09-14T10:00
George Frideric Handel completed the Messiah oratorio on this date in 1741. It was originally written for the Easter season, but became a Christmastime favorite.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 13, 2018 from 2018-09-13T10:00
On this date in 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage survived having an iron rod driven through his skull. His friends noticed dramatic changes in his personality, and Gage became a famous patient in...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 12, 2018 from 2018-09-12T10:00
It's the birthday of publisher Alfred A. Knopf, born in New York City in 1892. He started his own publishing house when he was 23 years old.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 from 2018-09-11T10:00
The Hope Diamond was stolen on this date in 1792 during the French Revolution. Rumored to be cursed, it now lives in the National Museum of Natural History in the United States.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 10, 2018 from 2018-09-10T10:00
It's the birthday of poet Mary Oliver, who said of her career in art: "I was very careful never to take an interesting job...if you have an interesting job you get interested in it."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 9, 2018 from 2018-09-09T10:00
It was on this day in 1830 that the first American aeronaut, a man named Charles Durant, completed his first balloon flight. The flight took about three hours, and he landed in a farm field, surpri...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 8, 2018 from 2018-09-08T10:00
It was on this day in 1504 that Michelangelo unveiled his sculpture David. Two other sculptors had tried and failed to finish the sculpture before the 26-year-old Michelangelo accepted the commission.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, September 7, 2018 from 2018-09-07T10:00
It was on this day that the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was wrongfully thrown into jail in Paris on charges of stealing the Mona Lisa, which had gone missing from the Louvre two and a half weeks ear...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, September 6, 2018 from 2018-09-06T10:00
It's the birthday of Alice Sebold, author of the best-selling novel The Lovely Bones.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, September 5, 2018 from 2018-09-05T10:00
It was on this day in 1957 that Jack Kerouac published On the Road, which told the story of Kerouac's & his friend Neal Cassady's hitchhiking adventures from 10 years before.
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 from 2018-09-04T10:00
Twenty years ago on this day, Google was incorporated as a company. In June of 2006, just under eight years after that, "Google" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb.
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, September 3, 2018 from 2018-09-03T10:00
Today is Labor Day, a national holiday created by President Grover Cleveland in 1894 to appease an angry workforce after he'd sent 12,000 federal troops to break up the Pullman Strike.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, September 2, 2018 from 2018-09-02T10:00
It was on this day in 1901 that Theodore Roosevelt uttered his famous words "Speak softly and carry a big stick"––at where else but the Minnesota State Fair.
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, September 1, 2018 from 2018-09-01T10:30
On this day in 1773, Phillis Wheatley published Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral, the first book ever published by a former American slave.
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 31, 2018 from 2018-08-31T10:00
It was on this day in 1422 that Henry VI became King of England at the age of nine months. In 1423, the year after he ascended to the throne, English nobles from around the land swore loyalty to th...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 30, 2018 from 2018-08-30T10:00
It's the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born Mary Godwin in London, England (1797). Her work Frankenstein (1818) is considered the first science fiction novel ever written.
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 29, 2018 from 2018-08-29T10:00
"Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!"
–Oliver Wendell Ho...
The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 from 2018-08-28T10:01
It was on this day in 1971 that Alice Waters opened her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. It had a set menu: pâtés en croûte, salad, duck with olives — and for dessert, an almond tart. It all cost ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 27, 2018 from 2018-08-27T10:00
It's the birthday of philosopher Georg Hegel (1770), who wrote, "Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 26, 2018 from 2018-08-26T10:00
Today is the birthday of French-Italian-Polish poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880), who is credited with coining the word “Surrealism.” He had a strong interest in modern painting, and was a friend o...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 25, 2018 from 2018-08-25T10:00
It's the birthday of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, born in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1918). When he was 10, his Aunt Clara was going through a divorce, and she sent her piano to the Bern...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 24, 2018 from 2018-08-24T10:00
It was on this day in the year 410 that Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. It was the first time in 800 years that Rome was successfully invaded.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 23, 2018 from 2018-08-23T10:00
On this date in 1966, Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photograph of the Earth from space. It's since been restored and digitized, and the level of detail has allowed scientists to study the weather ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 22, 2018 from 2018-08-22T10:00
It's the birthday of Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain, who said, "I believe if you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place. The stor...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 21, 2018 from 2018-08-21T10:00
It's the birthday of jazz pianist and bandleader William "Count" Basie, born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1904. He got his nickname from a disk jockey, who was of the opinion that Basie was every bi...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 20, 2018 from 2018-08-20T10:00
It was on this day in 1940 that an assassin mortally wounded Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky using an ice pick while Trotsky was staying in Mexico City.
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 19, 2018 from 2018-08-19T10:00
Today is the birthday of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the original Star Trek series. Star Trek was the first sci-fi series to depict a generally peaceful future, and that came from Roddenberry'...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 18, 2018 from 2018-08-18T10:00
On this day in 1958, Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita was published in the United States by G.P. Putnam's Sons. The book was a sensation, selling more than 100,000 copies in one week--the first nove...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 17, 2018 from 2018-08-17T10:00
On this date in 1982, the first compact discs for commercial release were manufactured in Germany. The first album sold in disc form on this date? ABBA's 1981 album The Visitors.
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 16, 2018 from 2018-08-16T10:00
"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, s...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 15, 2018 from 2018-08-15T10:00
It's the birthday of Stieg Larsson, a muckracking journalist and anti-fascist who originally took up fiction writing in 2001 as a way to make some extra money. His psychological thriller The Girl w...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 14, 2018 from 2018-08-14T10:00
It was on this day in 1935 that the original Social Security Act was passed. It was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and it was first intended to help keep senior citizens out of poverty, ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 13, 2018 from 2018-08-13T10:00
It's the birthday of director Alfred Hitchcock, who proposed that "the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 12, 2018 from 2018-08-12T10:00
Today is the birthday of the person who wrote the lines: "O beautiful for spacious skies, / For amber waves of grain, / For purple mountain majesties / Above the fruited plain!" That's Katharine Le...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 11, 2018 from 2018-08-11T10:00
It's the birthday of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, born Sunnyvale, CA in 1950. The Apple 1 computer came about when Wozniak got the idea to pair a typewriter keyboard with a television. Wozniak &...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 10, 2018 from 2018-08-10T10:00
It's the birthday of Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen. Sutphen spent her childhood on a farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota. She said: "Like many of the people I had read about, I set out on a lon...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 9, 2018 from 2018-08-09T10:00
On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency. Half an hour later, Gerald Ford gave his first speech as the president of the United States, saying, "My fellow Americans...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 from 2018-08-08T10:00
It's the birthday of physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, who won the Nobel Prize in 1939 for inventing the particle accelerator known as the cyclotron--or as he originally dubbed it, a "proton merry-go-r...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 from 2018-08-07T10:00
At 7:15 A.M. on this day in 1974, Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers a total of eight times. Petit's astonishing high-wire act made him an instant celebrity and garnered affe...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, August 6, 2018 from 2018-08-06T10:00
It was on this day in 1964 during a speech in Congress that Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska said, "All Vietnam is not worth the life of a single American boy." But the next day, Congress passed t...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, August 5, 2018 from 2018-08-05T10:00
The New York Daily News debuted the comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" on this day in 1924. It ran for 86 years and inspired a radio show, a Broadway musical, film adaptations, mass-marketed books, ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, August 4, 2018 from 2018-08-04T10:00
It's the birthday of jazz musician Louis Armstrong, born 1901. Growing up in New Orleans, Armstrong listened to pioneers like cornetist King Oliver, who gave Armstrong his big break by letting him ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, August 3, 2018 from 2018-08-03T10:00
On this date in 1527, the first known letter from the New World to the Old was sent to King Henry VIII of England. The letter writer, Master John Rut, was on an expedition to find the Northwest Pas...
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, August 2, 2018 from 2018-08-02T10:00
"You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way peopl...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 from 2018-08-01T10:00
Today is the birthday of Maria Mitchell, the first acknowledged female astronomer, born in 1818 on the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts. In 1849, she was awarded a gold medal from the king of D...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 from 2018-07-31T10:00
It's the birthday of J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. She was on a train in 1990 when she suddenly got the idea for a novel. "I was looking out of the window at some cows, I believe...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 30, 2018 from 2018-07-30T10:00
It's the birthday of Emily Brönte, best known for her only novel Wuthering Heights (1848). It's a passionate, tragic love story written by a woman who, as far as it is known, rarely spoke to anyone...
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The Writer's Almanac - Sunday, July 29, 2018 from 2018-07-29T10:00
Vincent Van Gogh died on this date in 1890. The mysterious circumstances around his death were the subject of the 2017 experimental animated art film Loving Vincent, whose 65,000 frames are actuall...
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The Writer's Almanac - Saturday, July 28, 2018 from 2018-07-28T10:00
Today is the birthday of Earl Tupper, inventor of Tupperware. At first, he sold his product through department and hardware stores, but without much success: people couldn't figure out how to make ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Friday, July 27, 2018 from 2018-07-27T10:00
It's the birthday of writer and critic Elizabeth Hardwick, who co-founded The New York Review of Books and who also said, "There are really only two reasons to write: desperation or revenge."
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The Writer's Almanac - Thursday, July 26, 2018 from 2018-07-26T10:00
Today is the birthday of Aldous Huxley, author of the classic dystopian novel Brave New World (1923). Comparing Brave New World to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), cultural critic Neil ...
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The Writer's Almanac - Wednesday, July 25, 2018 from 2018-07-25T10:00
It's the birthday of Louise Brown, the first baby conceived via in vitro insemination. "In vitro" means "in glass," so for years she was referred to as the first "test tube baby." She was born in O...
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The Writer's Almanac - Tuesday, July 24, 2018 from 2018-07-24T10:00
It's the birthday of writer and socialite Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama. She was named after the fictional gypsy heroine in Zelda's Fortune (1874), one of her mother's f...
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The Writer's Almanac - Monday, July 23, 2018 from 2018-07-23T10:00
On this date in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its first car, the Model A. Ford used all the letters of the alphabet from A to T, but not all of them were manufactured and sold; most were just p...
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The Writer's Almanac - Trailer - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? from 2018-07-21T03:31:33
The Writer's Almanac is a daily podcast of poetry and historical interest pieces, usually of literary significance, hosted by Garrison Keillor.
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