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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.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Posted on September 3, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

The U.S. War of Independence officially ended on this day in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The war, which began at Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775, had more or less been over for two years, since Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, but the American navy continued harassing the British, and by the time the treaty was signed the American fleet had captured dozens of British ships.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Posted on September 2, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Austrian novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, born in Brody, Ukraine (1894). He’s an author who was barely known during his lifetime, but has in the last few years come to be regarded as one of the greatest novelists to come out of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 1, 2025

Posted on September 1, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of one of the most popular pulp fiction writers in American history, Edgar Rice Burroughs, born in Chicago (1875). He had read Darwin’s book Descent of Man back in 1899, and he was fascinated by the idea that human beings were related to apes.

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