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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 7, 2025

Posted on September 7, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of singer and songwriter Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly, born in Lubbock, Texas, in1936. By the age of 13, Holly was playing what he called “Western Bop” at local clubs. He was 19 when an agent discovered him and signed him to a contract with Decca records.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 6, 2025

Posted on September 6, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the novelist Alice Sebold, born in Madison, Wisconsin (1963). She grew up wanting to be a writer, and went to Syracuse University, where some of the best writers in America were teaching, including Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. But one night during her freshman year of college, Sebold was walking home when she was attacked, dragged into an underground tunnel, and raped.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 5, 2025

Posted on September 5, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1957 that Jack Kerouac’s book On the Road was published. His inspiration for the book came ten years earlier. He was living in New York City with his mother, trying to write his first novel, when he met a drifter named Neal Cassady, an ex-convict from Denver who had actually been born in a car, and who became a car thief when he was fourteen years old.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 4, 2025

Posted on September 4, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the novelist Richard Wright, born in on a farm near Roxie, Mississippi (1908). He grew up in Jim Crow’s South, the son of a sharecropper and a schoolteacher. His grandparents had been slaves. His father abandoned the family when Richard was five years old. He moved with his mother to Memphis. He lived with various relatives and attended school sporadically, but he taught himself to read by secretly borrowing books from the whites-only library in Memphis.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Posted on September 3, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

The U.S. War of Independence officially ended on this day in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The war, which began at Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775, had more or less been over for two years, since Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, but the American navy continued harassing the British, and by the time the treaty was signed the American fleet had captured dozens of British ships.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Posted on September 2, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Austrian novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, born in Brody, Ukraine (1894). He’s an author who was barely known during his lifetime, but has in the last few years come to be regarded as one of the greatest novelists to come out of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 1, 2025

Posted on September 1, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of one of the most popular pulp fiction writers in American history, Edgar Rice Burroughs, born in Chicago (1875). He had read Darwin’s book Descent of Man back in 1899, and he was fascinated by the idea that human beings were related to apes.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 31, 2025

Posted on August 31, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of educator Maria Montessori, born in Chiaravalle, Italy (1870). She studied literature and medicine at the University of Rome and was the first woman in Italy to be granted a doctor of medicine (M.D.) degree. She worked as a psychiatric instructor at a clinic for children with learning disabilities and developed therapeutic approaches that involved appeals to the children’s senses, especially the sense of touch.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 30, 2025

Posted on August 30, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Warren Buffet, born in Omaha, Nebraska (1930). In February 2008, he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world, worth about $62 billion. Despite his massive wealth, he lived relatively frugally, still residing in the home he bought in 1958 for $31,500, driving his own car, and allotting himself an annual salary from his investment company of about $100,000.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, August 29, 2025

Posted on August 29, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of animal scientist and memoirist Temple Grandin, born in Boston (1947). At age two and a half, she was diagnosed with autism, and doctors recommended that her parents put her in an institution. Though she had developed and acted normally for the first six months of her life, she then began to stiffen up when her mother tried to hold and cuddle her.

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