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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 13, 2025

Posted on September 13, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Roald Dahl, born in Llandaff, South Wales (1916). He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 12, 2025

Posted on September 12, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1940 that four teenage boys discovered the Lascaux cave paintings, generally agreed to be the greatest works of prehistoric art ever found. The boys were looking for fabled buried treasure in the woods, and they stumbled upon a cavern, about 65 feet wide and 15 feet tall.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 11, 2025

Posted on September 11, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of William Sydney Porter, who wrote short stories under the pen name O. (Oliver) Henry, born in Greensboro, North Carolina (1862). As a young man in Austin, Texas, he worked as a teller at the First National Bank, where he was accused of embezzlement, convicted, and sentenced to five years at the penitentiary.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Posted on September 10, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1981 that Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica” was returned to Spain to hang in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The painting depicts the suffering in the city of Guernica, the capitol of Basque Spain, after a German bombardment in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Posted on September 9, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, born on his family’s estate in the province of Tula, near Moscow (1828). He led a wild life as a young man. Then in his mid-30s, he decided that it was time to get married.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 8, 2025

Posted on September 8, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday, in Washington, D.C., 1947, of writer Ann Beattie, the author of novels and short stories about Americans who came of age in the 1960s. Her first writings appeared in the early 1970s, when The New Yorker began accepting her short stories.

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.

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