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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, March 8, 2026

Posted on March 8, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1935 that Thomas Wolfe’s novel Of Time and the River was published. Wolfe’s editor was Maxwell Perkins, who also edited Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. When Wolfe brought Perkins a draft of Of Time and the River in December of 1933, it was more than one million words long, and still growing. The first installment alone was two feet high.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, March 7, 2026

Posted on March 7, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the anniversary of the first march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965), known as “Bloody Sunday.” Six hundred civil rights activists left Selma to march the 54 miles to the state capitol, demonstrating for African-American voting rights. They got six blocks before state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, March 6, 2026

Posted on March 6, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist who said, “I’ve always been convinced that my true profession is that of journalist.” That’s Gabriel García Márquez,, born in Aracataca, Colombia, on this day in 1927. He’s the author of one of the most important books in Latin American literature, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, March 5, 2026

Posted on March 5, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which took place on a cold and snowy night in 1770. British soldiers had occupied Boston for 18 months to protect the tax collectors for the king of England. There had been several street fights between soldiers and townsmen since the beginning of the month, so tensions were already high on the evening of March 5th.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Posted on March 4, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1791, Vermont became a state. It was the 14th state to join the Union — the first aside from the original 13 colonies. It’s the second-least populated state in the nation, and only five states are smaller in land area. Of all the 50 states, it has the very lowest Gross State Product. But it also has one of the best unemployment rates in the nation.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Posted on March 3, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the host of “This American Life”: Ira Glass, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1959. He got into radio, he says, “totally by accident.” It was 1978, he was 19, had just finished his freshman year of college, and was looking for a summer job with an ad agency or a TV station. He managed to talk his way into an internship with NPR despite the fact he’d never listened to public radio.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, March 2, 2026

Posted on March 2, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe, born in Richmond, Virginia (1931), the author of the books The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flake Catchers (1970), and The Right Stuff (1979). He helped spark the “New Journalism” movement, which began in the 1960s.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, March 1, 2026

Posted on March 1, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison, born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1914. He was the grandson of slaves, and he originally wanted to be a classical composer, but when he met the great African-American writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, they encouraged him to become a writer instead.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, February 28, 2026

Posted on February 28, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Colum McCann, born in Dublin, Ireland (1965). He’s the author of Let the Great World Spin (2009), which won the 2009 National Book Award. His fiction has been translated into 30 languages. He grew up in suburban middle-class Dublin in a house full of books and majored in journalism. At age 21, he moved to the United States, intent on writing the great American novel that summer. He didn’t get very far.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, February 27, 2026

Posted on February 27, 2026 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born in Portland, Maine (1807). He entered Bowdoin College at the age of 15, and one of his classmates was Nathaniel Hawthorne; the two would remain lifelong friends. When Longfellow graduated, the college gave him a chair in modern languages, and he worked with translations for the rest of his life.

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