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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 11, 2024

Posted on July 11, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the artist best known for a painting of his mother: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, born in Lowell, Massachusetts (1834). His most famous painting was titled Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871), but it’s more commonly known as “Whistler’s Mother.” It’s a portrait of Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler in a black dress, seated in profile against a gray wall. When Whistler’s scheduled model didn’t show up for a sitting, he decided to paint his mother instead.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Posted on July 10, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the short-story writer Alice Munro, born in Wingham, Ontario (1931). She grew up on a farm, and she said, “Reading was an indulgence that you didn’t go in for if there was physical work to be done.” Women were only supposed to read on Sundays, because on every other day of the week they had no excuse to be reading when they could be knitting instead.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Posted on July 9, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the “Queen of Romance,” a woman who wrote more than 700 books: Barbara Cartland, born in Birmingham, England (1901). She started working as a gossip columnist, became a society belle, and then started publishing romance novels. She always wore pink dresses, and she even launched a home decorating line, complete with pink, frilly home items.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, July 8, 2024

Posted on July 8, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1918 that Ernest Hemingway was wounded while serving as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I. The following January, Hemingway traveled back to his parents’ home, still recuperating from his injury. He walked around with a cane, read everything he could get his hands on, and taught his sisters Italian swear words. He was a small-town war hero and often spoke at schools and social clubs about his experience in the war. He always passed around his bloodstained, shrapnel-torn trousers.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, July 7, 2024

Posted on July 7, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the popular historian David McCullough, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1933). His first big book was Truman (1992), one of the best-selling biographies ever published. The sales were even greater for his biography John Adams, in 2001. Both books won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, July 6, 2024

Posted on July 6, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1535 that Sir Thomas More was beheaded in the Tower of London for refusing to recognize his longtime friend King Henry VIII as the head of the Church. Thomas More was a barrister, a scholar, and a writer. He was the author of Utopia (1516), a controversial novel about an imaginary island, where society was based on equality for all people. It is from this novel that we get our word “utopia.”

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).

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