Writer's Almanac Archives - Page 111 of 302 - Garrison Keillor

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 Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Posted on August 22, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of writer and wit Dorothy Parker (1893). She went to a Catholic elementary school, but she was asked to leave after she referred to the Immaculate Conception as “spontaneous combustion.” She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914, and she got offered a job as an editorial assistant for Vogue, which was owned by the same company. Two years later, she became a theater critic at Vanity Fair.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 21, 2023

Posted on August 21, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Robert Stone, born in Brooklyn (1937). He was raised by his mother, who was schizophrenic, and when she was institutionalized, he spent several years in a Catholic orphanage. Stone served as a correspondent in Vietnam for a British magazine, which quickly folded, but he got enough material to return home and write the novel Dog Soldiers (1974).

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 20, 2023

Posted on August 20, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Jacqueline Susann, born in Philadelphia (1918). She wanted to be an actress, so she moved to New York when she graduated from high school, but she never had much success. She did commercials, had bit parts in Broadway plays, and worked as a model. Her husband suggested that Susann write about her experience with the underbelly of show business. In 1966, she published Valley of the Dolls, about three ambitious young women who move to New York to try to make it big and end up destroying themselves.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 19, 2023

Posted on August 19, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of memoirist Frank McCourt, born in Brooklyn, New York (1930). He was the oldest of seven children born to an Irish immigrant couple, and they moved back to Limerick when McCourt was four years old, after the death of his baby sister. His childhood was marked by poverty, the deaths of half of his siblings, and his father’s alcoholism.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, August 18, 2023

Posted on August 18, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Italian-born Viennese composer Antonio Salieri, born in Legnago, in the Republic of Venice (1750). Although he was quite popular in the 18th century, he probably wouldn’t be well known today were it not for the movie Amadeus (1984). The movie was based on Peter Shaffer’s play by the same name (1979), which was in turn based on a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin, which was called Mozart and Salieri (1830).

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, August 17, 2023

Posted on August 17, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of American soldier, politician, and folk hero David — better known as “Davy” — Crockett, born in Greene County, Tennessee (1786). He was first elected to the state legislature of Tennessee in 1821, and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1827, where he served three nonconsecutive terms in all.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Posted on August 16, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the writer that The Washington Post called “the poet laureate of sour alleys and dark bars, of racetracks and long shots”: Charles Bukowski, born in Andernach, Germany (1920). He wrote more than 45 books of poetry and prose.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Posted on August 15, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Permanent construction began on the Berlin Wall on this date in 1961. After World War II, Germany had been divided up by British, French, Soviet, and American occupying forces. The city of Berlin lay completely within Soviet territory, but it was also divided. Soviet forces controlled the eastern part of the city and the country, and they were increasingly concerned about locking it down against the democratic West. The border was porous after the war, and millions of East Germans emigrated west in search of greater opportunities. By 1961, they were leaving at a rate of a thousand per day.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 14, 2023

Posted on August 14, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

The original Social Security Act was signed into law on this date in 1935. It was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and it was first intended to help keep senior citizens out of poverty. When he signed the act into law, Roosevelt said: “We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 13, 2023

Posted on August 13, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of American sharpshooter Annie Oakley (1860), born Phoebe Ann Mosey in a log cabin just north of what is now Willowdell, in Darke County, Ohio. Her parents were Quakers from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Oakley’s father died of pneumonia when she was six, which sent her mother into a financial tailspin. Oakley was the sixth of nine children, and she and her sister were sent to the Darke County Children’s Infirmary, where they learned to cook and sew. After a few years, Oakley was “bound out” to a local family, who expected her to be able to cook, pump water, and care for their child. Oakley was small and the couple was unkind; they beat and starved her and left her outside in freezing weather without shoes. She called them “the wolves” and after two years, she ran away and returned to her mother.

Load next posts