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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 5, 2024

Posted on July 5, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of American artist Chuck Close, born in Monroe, Washington (1940). He had a rough childhood: He was dyslexic and didn’t do well in school; his father died when Chuck was 11, and his mother developed breast cancer soon after. Their medical bills were so high that the family lost their house, and Close was bedridden for almost a year due to a serious kidney infection. He got through by drawing and painting, and took his first trip to the Seattle Art Museum soon after his father died.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 4, 2024

Posted on July 4, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1855, Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The first edition consisted of 12 poems, and was published anonymously; Whitman set much of the type himself, and paid for its printing. Over his lifetime, he published eight more editions, adding poems each time; there were 122 new poems in the third edition alone (1860-61), and the final “death-bed edition,” published in 1891, contained almost 400 poems.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Posted on July 3, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Franz Kafka, born in Prague (1883). At the time, Prague was part of the Hapsburg Empire of Bohemia. His family’s apartment in the Jewish ghetto in Prague was tiny, noisy, and subject to the rule and whims of his tyrannical father. Kafka stuttered around his father, but no one else.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Posted on July 2, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1961 that Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho. He’d had trouble writing since he’d participated in World War II. After the war was over, he said, “It’s as though you had heard so much loud music you couldn’t hear anything played delicately.” He’d been struggling to write a long novel called The Sea Book, but it wasn’t coming together so he was only able to publish a small part of it called The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, July 1, 2024

Posted on July 1, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1858 that joint papers about the theory of evolution, written by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, were presented to the Linnean Society of London. Wallace was only 25 at the time that the papers were read, and Darwin was 49. Darwin had begun formulating his theories about natural selection about 20 years earlier, but he was a slow, methodical worker, and he thought that since no one else had the same ideas, he might as well take his time.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 30, 2024

Posted on June 30, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1936 that the novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was first published. She started writing the book while on bed rest from an injury, but didn’t tell anyone about it because she thought it wasn’t any good. One of her friends, Lois Cole, found chunks of the manuscript

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 29, 2024

Posted on June 29, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize, for her novel The Age of Innocence. Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street won the first vote, but it was considered too offensive by some prominent Midwesterners. Wharton lived in Paris during World War I, and she said, “I found a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America, and wrote The Age of Innocence.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 28, 2024

Posted on June 28, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born on this day in Geneva (1712). In 1749, the Academy of Dijon sponsored an essay contest, and the question was: “Has the revival of the arts and sciences done more to corrupt or to purify morals?” Rousseau was delighted by the question, and he said that his head was so full of ideas he was unable to breathe.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, June 27, 2024

Posted on June 27, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of author and educator Helen Keller, born in Tuscumbia, Alabama (1880). She lost her sight and her hearing due to scarlet fever or meningitis when she was 20 months old. After she recovered, she was not only blind and deaf, she’d also become extremely angry. She flew into tantrums at the slightest provocation, kicking, screaming, and biting her family members.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Posted on June 26, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Pearl S. Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were Presbyterian missionaries in China, and Buck was born while they were on vacation in the United States. When she was three months old, they took her back to China. She learned to speak Chinese before she learned to speak English. She and her brother explored the streets and markets of Zhenjiang, watching puppet shows and sampling food.

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