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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 24, 2024

Posted on August 24, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist A.S. Byatt, born Antonia Susan Drabble in Sheffield, England (1936). She grew up in a literary family, and she was a shy girl. She said she didn’t speak to anyone voluntarily until she was 16. She went to a Quaker boarding school, and in order to be alone, she made a secret workspace for herself in the school’s boiler room, where she could read and write by the light of the fire.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, August 23, 2024

Posted on August 23, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

And it’s the birthday of Edgar Lee Masters, born in Garnett, Kansas (1868). He grew up in small farming towns in Illinois, and he wanted to write a novel about growing up in Illinois, but he didn’t know where to start. Then, the editor of a poetry magazine sent him a book of poems called Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, epigrams from classical Greece, many of them about the details of daily life and ordinary people.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, August 22, 2024

Posted on August 22, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Annie Proulx, born in Norwich, Connecticut (1935). She was virtually unknown until the early 1990s, when she burst on to the literary scene, publishing her first novels, Postcards (1992) and The Shipping News (1993) when she was in her late 50s. She said she doesn’t regret becoming a writer later than most people because, she said, she knows a lot more about life than she did 20 years ago.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Posted on August 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the boy who inspired his father to write the children’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Christopher Robin Milne, born in London (1920). His father, A.A. Milne, was an extremely prolific author who wrote plays, novels, mysteries, poetry, and essays. It wasn’t until after Christopher Robin was born that A.A. Milne began to write for children.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Posted on August 20, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1977 that Voyager 2 was launched by NASA to explore the planets of our solar system and to take the first up-close photographs of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Just before the Voyagers took off, a committee of scientists, led by Carl Sagan, decided to put on board each Voyager a message from Earth in case extraterrestrials ever found them. At the time, the Cold War was at its height, and some members of the committee considered that these spacecraft and their contents might be the last traces of the human race left in the universe after a nuclear war.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 19, 2024

Posted on August 19, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Frank McCourt, born in Brooklyn, New York (1930). He was the first of seven children born to two Irish immigrants. He lived for a few years in New York City, as his father struggled to hold onto a job, but after his younger sister died, the family decided to return to Ireland, and they settled in the town of Limerick.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 18, 2024

Posted on August 18, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this date in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote. In the latter half of the 19th century, states began gradually loosening restrictions on voting rights for women. Most Southern states opposed the amendment, and on August 18, 1920, it all came down to Tennessee. The pro-amendment faction wore yellow roses in their lapels, and the “anti” faction wore red American Beauty roses.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 17, 2024

Posted on August 17, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the poet Ted Hughes, born in the town of Mytholmroyd, England (1930). He grew up in the countryside, surrounded by moors. He joined the air force and was assigned duty as a wireless mechanic in an isolated spot in rural Yorkshire, where he read Shakespeare all day. At Cambridge he studied anthropology and archaeology. After he graduated, he helped found a literary magazine, and at the launch party, he met an American student named Sylvia Plath.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, August 16, 2024

Posted on August 16, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Charles Bukowski, born in Andernach, Germany (1920). He published more than 15 wildly popular books of fiction and poetry, including Run With the Hunted (1962), and The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969).

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, August 15, 2024

Posted on August 15, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of food critic Julia Child, born in Pasadena, California (1912). She was a tomboy as a child, and grew to be more than six feet tall. When she went to college, she wanted to be a basketball star before she changed her mind and tried to write a novel. But that didn’t work out either.

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