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 Monday, January 11, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, January 11, 2021

It’s the birthday of doctor and philosopher William James (1842), who coined the term “Pragmatism.”

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 10, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 10, 2021

Today, for her birthday, we feature the poem “Against Endings” by Dorianne Laux. She advises, “Any good poem is asking you simply to slow down.”

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, January 9, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, January 9, 2021

Today is the birthday of French novelist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908) who wrote “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, January 8, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, January 8, 2021

It’s the birthday of physicist and author Stephen Hawking (1942) who beat the odds of life with ALS, surviving for 55 years and publishing more than 20 books.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, January 7, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, January 7, 2021

Author Zora Neale Hurston was born on this day in 1891. Author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” and “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo.'”

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, January 6, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, January 6, 2021

“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” –Barry Lopez, (1945)

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, January 5, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Today is the birthday of poet W.D. Snodgrass (1926). Inspired to write by the demise of his marriage, he helped invent the style of confessional poetry.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, January 4, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, January 4, 2021

Today is the birthday of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943), who says of history, “Mostly it is for people who didn’t live through it.”

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 3, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 3, 2021

It’s the birthday of the writer who created Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, and Gollum: J.R.R. Tolkien (Bloemfontein, South Africa, 1892).

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, January 2, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, January 2, 2021

“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.” –Antarctic explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Read More