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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Posted on June 14, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, born in the Bronx, New York (1904). She was born on her parents’ anniversary. Her mother, Minnie, homeschooled the kids and tried to teach them courage as well as academics. Maggie, as they called her, took these lessons to heart, and always made it a point to challenge herself. Her dad was an amateur photographer, and as a kid she would accompany him on photo excursions and help him in the darkroom.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Posted on June 13, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Irish poet William Butler Yeats, born in Sandymount, Ireland (1865), and considered one of the greatest poets in the history of the English language. Some of his most famous poems are “Easter, 1916,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 12, 2023

Posted on June 12, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Anne Frank (born in Frankfurt, Germany, 1929), who died at the age of 14 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany during the Holocaust. Frank, her family, and four other people hid for two years in an attic space above Frank’s father’s business warehouse. The space was called “The Secret Annex,” and they survived through the help of Otto Frank’s employees, who brought them food, newspapers, and sundries.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 11, 2023

Posted on June 11, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the playwright Ben Jonson, born on this day in London, probably in 1572. His plays include Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1606), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). A contemporary, friend, and rival of Shakespeare’s, Jonson was a heavy drinker and a fighter, no “Gentle Will.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 10, 2023

Posted on June 10, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1881, Leo Tolstoy set off on a pilgrimage to the Optina-Pustyn monastery. He was 52 years old, and his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), were behind him. He had found himself in a crisis—he was famous, had a family and land and money, but it all seemed empty. He was amazed that the majority of ordinary Russians managed to keep themselves going every day, and he finally decided that it must be their faith.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 9, 2023

Posted on June 9, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s 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, born in Peru, Indiana (1891). Most of his great songs were written within a 10-year period: between his first popular Broadway musical, Paris (1928)—his first musicals had been complete flops—and a terrible riding accident in 1937.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, June 8, 2023

Posted on June 8, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (1867). His life spanned an era full of dramatic changes: he was born two years after the Civil War ended, and died in 1959, a year and a half after the first Sputnik launch. Wright would often tell his students: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Posted on June 7, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist and poet Louise Erdrich, born in Little Falls, Minnesota (1954). She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Her mother was French Ojibwe and her father was German American; she grew up in a big family, the oldest of seven children, with lots of extended family nearby. She said: “The people in our families made everything into a story […] People just sit and the stories start coming, one after another. You just sort of grab the tail of the last person’s story: it reminds you of something and you keep going on. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories rise, break and fall, it gets into you somehow.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Posted on June 6, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Sigmund Freud, born in Freiburg, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), in 1856. He’s usually associated with Vienna, where he lived from the age of four until the Germans occupied it in 1938. He then moved to London, where he died of throat cancer in 1939.
Freud started his professional life as a medical doctor, but as a Jew, he knew his prospects in medicine were probably limited. He became interested in psychology, especially in a mental illness called hysteria, which caused patients to suffer from tics, tremors, convulsions, paralysis, and hallucinations. Freud learned that some doctors were using hypnosis to treat hysteria, and he went to France to observe the use of hypnosis firsthand. Seeing that a patient could be talked out of his or her symptoms gave Freud the idea that the symptoms were a product of the mind and not the body. He learned the method of hypnosis himself and began to treat patients, but he had little success. Then one of Freud’s colleagues told him about a patient named Anna O., whose hysterical symptoms had improved when she told stories about her life. The woman herself named this process of storytelling “the talking cure.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 5, 2023

Posted on June 5, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (1898) born in Fuente Vaqueros, in the province of Granada. His father was a successful farmer, and his mother was a gifted pianist. García Lorca published his first book, Impressions and Landscapes, in 1918, and then moved to Madrid the following year, enrolling in the Residencia de Estudiantes (Student Residence), a cultural center that provided a stimulating, dynamic, and progressive environment for university students.

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