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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, December 30, 2023

Posted on December 30, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of short-story writer, poet, and novelist (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, India (1865). His father was a British artist who got an appointment to run an art school in Bombay, but after a series of typhoid and cholera outbreaks, Kipling’s parents decided to send him back to England for his own safety.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, December 29, 2023

Posted on December 29, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1916 that James Joyce published his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The idea for the book had originated with an autobiographical essay that Joyce had written way back in 1904, when he was still living in Ireland. He’d submitted it to a journal, but it was rejected on the basis that it was too frank about sexual matters. When Joyce got the rejection letter, he sat down at his kitchen table and sketched out a plan to expand the essay into a novel about his own childhood.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, December 28, 2023

Posted on December 28, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the 28th president of the United States, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, born in Staunton, Virginia (1856). He was one of the few American presidents who came to office after a career in academia. He’d started out as a professor of history and political science at Princeton University, and in 1902, he was appointed president of Princeton. But he ran into a series of disagreements with the Board of Trustees over his ambitious plans to remake the university. He was on the verge of getting fired in 1910, when he received an offer to run for governor of New Jersey. He took the offer, and wound up winning the election by a landslide.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Posted on December 27, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man credited for proving that disease is caused by germs: Louis Pasteur born in Dole, France (1822). He was a scientist who specialized in the properties of acids when, one day, a local distillery owner asked him to figure out why the fermentation of beet sugar into alcohol sometimes failed. At the time, people knew about the existence of microbes, but most scientists thought they were insignificant oddities.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Posted on December 26, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It is the birthday of humorist David Sedaris, born near Binghamton, New York (1956). Sedaris worked many odd jobs, including dishwasher, apple picker, and writing instructor. While living in Chicago, he made a living by painting apartments and squirrel-proofing houses. For most of his life, Sedaris had kept a diary in which he documented at least one incident from every day of his life.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, December 25, 2023

Posted on December 25, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is Christmas Day. About 96 percent of Americans say that they celebrate Christmas in one way or another; but Christians didn’t start celebrating Christmas until the fourth century A.D. Apparently, the earliest Christians weren’t nearly as interested in Jesus’ birth as they were in his resurrection from the dead. Historians believe that the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel to be written about Jesus, around 50 A.D., and it doesn’t even mention Jesus’ birth. It starts with his adult baptism.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, December 24, 2023

Posted on December 24, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was named the Allied Supreme Commander of British and American forces. The appointment was announced during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chat for Christmas Eve. In that same broadcast, FDR expressed confidence that the Allies would be victorious: “Last year I could not do more than express a hope. Today I express a certainty, though the cost may be high and the time may be long.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, December 23, 2023

Posted on December 23, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Harriet Monroe, born in Chicago (1880). She was 32 years old when she decided to establish a magazine devoted entirely to poetry—and intended to pay poets for their work. In September, 1912, she came out with the first issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. For the next twenty-four years Monroe raised money, awarded prizes, and published Poetry. In 1914 she published Carl Sandburg’s controversial “Chicago Poems” and in 1915 printed “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, December 22, 2023

Posted on December 22, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday today of Thomas Higginson, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1823). He was an abolitionist and social reformer who had written several pieces for The Atlantic Monthly. But the reason we know him today is that, in the spring of 1862, he received a letter and four poems from Emily Dickinson. The letter read: “MR. HIGGINSON—Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive? The mind is so near itself it cannot see distinctly, and I have none to ask.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, December 21, 2023

Posted on December 21, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Heinrich Böll, born in Cologne, Germany (1917). He was drafted into the German army when he was 22, and suffered “the frightful fate of being a soldier and having to wish that the war might be lost.” His most popular book was The Clown (1963). In 1971, he won the Nobel Prize for what the Nobel committee called “his most grandly conceived work,” Group Portrait With Lady, a survey of German life over five decades.

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