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Writer's Almanac

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 23, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 23, 2020

The lines “This land is your land and this land is my land/From the California to the New York Island” were written on this day 80 years ago by Woody Guthrie.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 22, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 22, 2020

It’s the birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892), a Jazz Age icon who drew huge crowds of adoring fans to her poetry readings and who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 21, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 21, 2020

It was 95 years ago today that the first issue of The New Yorker was published, an issue that the editors apologized for in the second issue.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 20, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 20, 2020

It’s the birthday of Kurt Cobain (1967), lead singer of the band Nirvana, as well as Robert Altman (1925), who directed films including “A Prairie Home Companion.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 19, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 19, 2020

It’s the birthday of novelist Carson McCullers (1917), who published “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” when she was just 23 years old.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 18, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Today is the birthday of Sholem Aleichem (1895), known as the Mark Twain of Yiddish literature. He said, “No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 17, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, February 17, 2020

It’s the birthday of English crime novelist Ruth Rendell (1930-2015), who said, “The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 16, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, February 16, 2020

It’s the birthday of the printer Giambattista Bodoni (Italy, 1740), namesake of the popular typeface Bodoni. He personally designed around 300 typefaces.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 15, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 15, 2020

Today is the 200th birthday of Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1920, 14 years after her death, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 14, 2020

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 14, 2020

Today is Saint Valentine’s Day, named for a Roman priest who performed clandestine weddings in defiance of Emperor Claudius II’s law forbidding marriage.

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