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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, July 30, 2023

Posted on July 30, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on this day in 1818. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and the sister of Anne and Charlotte Brontë; there was also a brother, Branwell, who was an artist and poet. Emily’s mother died of cancer when Emily was only three, and because their father was a quiet, solitary man who spent much of his time in his room, the children soon learned to entertain themselves.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, July 29, 2023

Posted on July 29, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet Stanley Kunitz, born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1905). His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father committed suicide in a public park before Kunitz was born, and his mother, Yetta, erased all traces of Stanley’s father from the house, and refused to speak about him. She opened up a dry-goods store and sewed clothes in the back room, working overtime to pay off the debts that her husband had left behind, even though legally she was not obligated to pay them.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 28, 2023

Posted on July 28, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, born in Stratford, near London (1844). He was the eldest of nine children. The whole family drew pictures, wrote stories, and put on plays together. When Hopkins wasn’t drawing or painting, he liked to climb trees, and especially loved the feeling of walking barefoot in the grass.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 27, 2023

Posted on July 27, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of writer and critic Elizabeth Hardwick, born in Lexington, Kentucky (1916). She moved to New York to study at Columbia. In 1946, she met the poet Robert Lowell at a party. He was in the middle of an ugly divorce from his first wife, the writer Jean Stafford, but Hardwick and Lowell reconnected at a writers retreat and married in 1949. During their honeymoon, Lowell had a manic depressive attack, and throughout their marriage, he had frequent affairs and breakdowns. She said: “I didn’t know what I was getting into, but even if I had, I still would have married him. He was not crazy all the time — most of the time he was wonderful.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Posted on July 26, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of playwright George Bernard Shaw, born in Dublin (1856). He’s the author of dozens of plays, including Man and Superman (1905), Pygmalion (1912), and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1925 and an Oscar in 1938 for his contribution to the film Pygmalion.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Posted on July 25, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

The Concorde crashed outside Paris on this date in 2000, killing all 109 people aboard. Four people on the ground were also killed when the jet crashed into a small hotel and restaurant. Shortly after take-off, one of the tires burst, and the debris struck a fuel tank, which ruptured and burst into flames.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, July 24, 2023

Posted on July 24, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama (1900). She met F. Scott Fitzgerald at one of the military dances when he was stationed in Montgomery. He stood out from the crowd, wearing his Brooks Brothers uniform and his cream-colored boots. Zelda said, “He smelled like new goods.” He told her that she looked like the heroine in the novel he was writing.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, July 23, 2023

Posted on July 23, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this night in 1967 that a riot broke out in Detroit, marking the beginning of the decline of one of the greatest manufacturing cities in the country. An all-white squadron of police officers decided to raid a bar in a black neighborhood where there was a party to welcome home two recent veterans of the Vietnam War. The police stormed the bar, rounded up and arrested 85 black men and began loading them into vans.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, July 22, 2023

Posted on July 22, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Emma Lazarus, born in New York City (1849). She came from a wealthy Jewish family, and her father paid to have her first collection of poems published when she was 17. Her early work impressed Ralph Waldo Emerson, and they corresponded for many years. In the 1880s, she was horrified to hear of violent anti-Semitic attacks in Russia and Germany, and her work took on a new Zionist focus. The Statue of Liberty committee approached her in 1883 and asked her to write a poem that they could auction off to raise money for the monument. She responded with “The New Colossus,” which includes the famous lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 21, 2023

Posted on July 21, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of writer Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois (1899). In July of 1925, he visited Pamplona, Spain, for the Festival of San Fermín, a weeklong celebration that included bullfighting and the famous Running of the Bulls. Hemingway and his wife arrived a few days early to get tickets, and he needed a way to spend the time; so on this day in 1925, on his 26th birthday, he began his first novel. He said, “Everybody my age had written a novel and I was still having a difficult time writing a paragraph.” He wrote in the days leading up to the celebration, he wrote in bed every morning during the week of the festival, and when it was over, he continued writing. He wrote in hotels and bars in Madrid and the French town of Hendaye, and in an apartment in Paris. He finished the first draft just two months after he had begun writing. He told a friend years later: “Toward the last it was like a fever. Toward the last I was sprinting, like in a bicycle race, and I did not want to lose my speed making love or anything else.”

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