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Writer's Almanac

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 7, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 7, 2021

It’s the birthday of Sinclair Lewis (1885), whose novel “Main Street” satirizing people in the Midwest caused a sensation. It made him a millionaire in 1920.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 6, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 6, 2021

Today is the birthday of Mary Douglas Leakey (1913), who discovered fifteen new species of animal in her career as a paleoanthropologist.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 5, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 5, 2021

It’s the 85th anniversary of the opening of the last film to feature Charlie Chaplin’s character The Little Tramp, “Modern Times”(1963).

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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 4, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 4, 2021

This day marks the birth 100 years ago, and death 15 years ago, of Betty Friedan, women’s rights activist and author of “The Feminine Mystique.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 3, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 3, 2021

This day marks the 200th birthday of the first woman to be granted a medical degree in the USA — Elizabeth Blackwell, who crossed an ocean to become a doctor.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 2, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 2, 2021

W.B. Yeats once said, “Never have I seen so much pretension with so little to show for it,” about a young Irish writer named James Joyce, born this day, 1882.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 1, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 1, 2021

Meg Cabot was born on this day in 1967. She is the author of a series of books about a teenager who discovers she is a princess, “The Princess Diaries.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 31, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 31, 2021

Today is the birthday of Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe, who has explored parental guilt and shame in several books influenced by his disabled son Hikari.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, January 30, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, January 30, 2021

On this day in1972, British army parachutists shot 27 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland — an event known as “Bloody Sunday.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, January 29, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, January 29, 2021

Today features a poem that brings us together in our current pandemic to those enduring one in the past, “Quarantine, 1918” by Faith Shearin.

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