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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, March 8, 2024

Posted on March 8, 2024 - 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 Thursday, March 7, 2024

Posted on March 7, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of one of the great Texas troubadours and a legend in songwriting circles, Townes Van Zandt, born in Fort Worth (1944). He was born into wealthy oil family, and they moved around quite a bit when he was a young kid — to Minnesota, Colorado, and Illinois — but he abandoned wealth for poetry and singing and living couch to couch.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Posted on March 6, 2024 - 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 Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Posted on March 5, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of a playwright and folklorist who was also W.B. Yeats’s early patron, long-term and most loyal friend, a woman G.B. Shaw called “the greatest Irishwoman.” Lady Gregory was born Isabella Augusta Persse on this day in 1852 (some sources say March 15) in Roxborough, County Tipperary, Ireland. She helped lead the Irish Literary Revival in the early 20th century and she co-founded, along with Yeats, the Abbey Theatre.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, March 4, 2024

Posted on March 4, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Khaled Hosseini, born in Kabul (1965), author of the runaway best-selling novel The Kite Runner (2003), which has sold more than 12 million copies around the world. He’s the son of a diplomat, and his affluent family immigrated to the United States around the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, receiving political asylum as members of Afghanistan’s government were being executed. They landed in San Jose, California, when Khaled was 12 with nearly nothing.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, March 3, 2024

Posted on March 3, 2024 - 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.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, March 2, 2024

Posted on March 2, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of a man considered to be the most popular children’s book writer in American history, the best-selling children’s book writer of all time, and a man who revolutionized the way children learned to read: Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on this day in 1904.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, March 1, 2024

Posted on March 1, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet Robert Lowell, born in Boston (1917), who twice won the Pulitzer Prize and whose work established the Confessional style of poetry in America. Among his most famous poems: “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,” “Skunk Hour,” “For the Union Dead,” “Fall 1961,” “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage,” and “Epilogue.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, February 29, 2024

Posted on February 29, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s Leap Year Day today. It’s also ‘Ladies Day’, the one day in four years when shy women can propose to eligible bachelors.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Posted on February 28, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man who almost beat Watson and Crick to the discovery of DNA, the chemist Linus Pauling, born in Oswego, Oregon (1901). He studied chemistry at Oregon Agricultural College, and then won a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to go abroad to study the new field of quantum mechanics with some of the most important physicists of the era.

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