Albums APHC Clips Audio Events Prairie Home Archives Songs Writer's Almanac
Writer's Almanac

To subscribe to the Writer’s Almanac Anniversary Episode email, which includes the unedited text and audio from one daily anniversary episode selected from the archive, click here >>>

To browse archived episodes of The Writer’s Almanac from before 2017, click here >>>

• • • • •

To support The Writer’s Almanac Anniversary Episodes newsletter, please consider “buying” a donation here >>>

You can also buy a paid subscription to the Anniversary Episode newsletter here >>>

Checks may be made out to Prairie Home Productions, LLC and mailed to:

Prairie Home Productions
P.O. Box 2090
Minneapolis, MN 55402

(Note: donations to LLCs are not tax-deductible)

• • • • •

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 19, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 19, 2025

It was on this day in 1945 that U.S. Marines began their invasion of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima, whose name means Sulfur Island, is a small volcanic island 660 miles off the coast of mainland Japan, just eight square miles. The writer William Manchester described Iwo Jima as “an ugly, smelly glob of cold lava squatting in a surly ocean.”

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 18, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 18, 2025

It was on this day in 1678 that The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan was published, a book that became a huge mass-market best-seller during the author’s lifetime. At the time of its publication, Bunyan was 50 years old, a little-known Baptist preacher who had been thrown in jail for preaching without a license.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 17, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 17, 2025

It’s the birthday of crime novelist Ruth Rendell, born in London, England (1930). Her parents had a terrible marriage and her mother was ill with multiple sclerosis that went undiagnosed for years, and so young Ruth began writing about her life as if it were a story happening to someone else.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 16, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 16, 2025

On this date in 1937, Wallace Carothers and DuPont Chemical Company were granted a patent for the synthetic polymer called nylon. Carothers was a gifted chemist and was made a chemistry instructor while he was still a student at Tarkio College in Missouri. When World War I broke out and many college faculty were sent overseas, he even served as head of the department.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 15, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 15, 2025

It’s the birthday of artist, writer, and filmmaker Miranda July, born Miranda Grossinger in Barre, Vermont (1974). She grew up in Berkeley and attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, but dropped out after a couple of years — she was frustrated with her film class, which she said was “all guys, and every project had a gun or a dog in it.” So she moved to Portland and started doing performance art.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 14, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 14, 2025

On this day in 1895, Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London. He wrote the first draft in just 21 days, the fastest he’d ever written anything. The play tells the story of a man named Jack Worthing who pretends to have a younger brother named Earnest.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 13, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 13, 2025

It’s the birthday of novelist Georges Simenon, born in Liège, Belgium (1903). He’s one of the most prolific writers of all time, best known for his detective novels featuring Inspector Maigret. He wrote more than 400 books, which sold more than 1.4 billion copies from 1935 to 1997.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 12, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 12, 2025

It’s the birthday of Judy Blume, born in Elizabeth, New Jersey (1938), the best-selling author of more than two dozen books for young people. She was 27 years old, with two preschool-aged children, when she began writing seriously. For two years, she received constant rejections. Then in 1970, she had her big breakthrough, with the young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 11, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 11, 2025

It was on this day in 1990 that Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison, outside Cape Town, South Africa. He had been imprisoned for 27 years because of his involvement with the African National Congress. The ANC was the main group resisting the apartheid government, and after decades of nonviolence, some members of the group — including Mandela — had begun advocating violence as the only way to deal with the brutal and violent tactics of the government.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 10, 2025

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 10, 2025

It’s the birthday of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht in Augsburg, Bavaria (1898). He studied philosophy, drama and medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich where he first experimented with writing poetry and plays.

Read More