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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, May 26, 2024

Posted on May 26, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of John Wayne, born Marion Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, in 1907. He grew up in Southern California and earned his famous nickname, “Duke,” as a child; he was never seen without his Airedale dog, Duke, and people began calling him “Little Duke.” He liked the name better than Marion, and it stuck. His first on-screen film credit was as “Duke Morrison.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, May 25, 2024

Posted on May 25, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet Theodore Roethke, born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1908. He grew up working with his father and uncle in his family’s greenhouses, and later said, “They were to me, I realize now, both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan, where austere German Americans turned their love of order and their terrifying efficiency into something beautiful.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, May 24, 2024

Posted on May 24, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman in 1941. He was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in nearby Hibbing, just off the road that ran all the way up from New Orleans and lent its name to his sixth album, 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, May 23, 2024

Posted on May 23, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the author of the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon: Margaret Wise Brown, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1910. Brownie, as she was known to her friends, had a revolutionary idea about children’s stories: Kids would rather read about things from their own world than fairy tales and fables.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Posted on May 22, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of writer Peter Matthiessen, born in New York City (1927). He grew up in a wealthy family in Connecticut, where he went to boarding school before joining the Navy during WWII. He went on to Yale and later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Matthiessen published his first short stories in The Atlantic Monthly, but he was barely scraping by teaching creative writing courses, when one of his Yale professors, Norman Holmes Pearson, asked if he would work for the newly formed CIA.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Posted on May 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. When Clara was only 10, her brother David fell off the roof of the family barn. At first, he seemed fine, but the next day he developed a headache and fever. The doctor diagnosed “too much blood” and prescribed the application of leeches to help draw out the extra blood. Clara took over as her brother’s nurse and spent two years at his bedside applying leeches (though David did not get any better until he tried an innovative “steam therapy” several years later).

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, May 20, 2024

Posted on May 20, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published on this day in 1609, most likely without Shakespeare’s permission. The book contained 154 sonnets, all but two of which had never been published before. Shakespeare (or perhaps the publisher Thomas Thorpe) dedicated the collection to “Mr. W.H.” whose identity has never been known. The poems are about love, sex, politics, youth, and the mysterious “Dark Lady,” and they have given young lovers and the hopelessly romantic words for the ages.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, May 19, 2024

Posted on May 19, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska (1925). When he was four years old and living in East Lansing, Michigan, white supremacists set fire to the family’s home. The East Lansing police and firefighters—all white—came to the house when called, but stood by and watched it burn. When he was six, his father was murdered.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, May 18, 2024

Posted on May 18, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It is the birthday of comedy writer-cum-actress Tina Fey, born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania (1970). She was a high school honor student, a member of the drama club, and she performed in a summer theater group. She enrolled at the University of Virginia where she studied playwriting and acting, and after graduation in 1992 she moved to Chicago, where she took night classes at the improv training center The Second City, while working at a YMCA during the day. In 1994, she began performing with The Second City, traveling around the country and doing eight shows a week for two years. Three years later, she was hired as a sketch writer for Saturday Night Live and she quickly rose to head writer.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, May 17, 2024

Posted on May 17, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

The Supreme Court ruled that school segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment on this date in 1954. An eight-year-old girl named Linda Brown in Topeka, Kansas, had to travel 21 blocks every day to an all-black elementary school, even though she lived just seven blocks from another elementary school for white children. Her father, Oliver Brown, asked that his daughter be allowed to attend the nearby white school, and when the white school’s principal refused, Brown sued.

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