The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 26, 2023

It’s the birthday of writer Pearl S. Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were Christian missionaries, and she was raised in China from the age of three months. She said: “I spoke Chinese first, and more easily. […] I did not consider myself a white person in those days.” She was tutored in the mornings by her mother, but spent the afternoons with her beloved Chinese nurse, who told her stories and took her to visit friends, where young Pearl listened to women gossip. She played with Chinese friends, joined their parties, and hid her blond hair underneath a hat.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 25, 2023

Today is the birthday of the man who wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” That’s George Orwell, born Eric Blair in Motihari, India (1903). He believed there were four great motives for writing prose: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 24, 2023

It’s the birthday of satirist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce, nicknamed “Bitter Bierce,” born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio (1842). He was the 10th of 13 children, and his parents were strict Puritan farmers. But his father had a library, and Ambrose said that those books allowed him to pull himself “out of the life of obscurity, privation, and labor in the fields.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 23, 2023

Today is the birthday of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, (1889). She’s considered one of Russia’s greatest poets, though for decades her work was banned and her relatives executed and imprisoned under the Joseph Stalin’s Reign of Terror.
Anna Akhmatova wrote, “I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday June 22, 2023

It is the birthday of the “greatest-living actress,” Meryl Streep, born in New Jersey in 1949. Streep has more Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations than any other actor. She has also won two film-industry lifetime achievement awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 21, 2023

It’s the birthday of Edward Snowden, born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina (1983). His family moved to Maryland when he was a boy, and his mother went to work for the federal court in Baltimore.
He got a job with the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland. The center had ties to the National Security Agency. He believed that the NSA was gathering too much information on American citizens, and he intended to blow the whistle.
Snowden has lived overseas ever since and is currently living in Russia on a three-year residence permit that expires this August; his request for clemency from the U.S. government was denied, and despite a plea from various human rights groups, President Obama declined to pardon him before he left office.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 20, 2023

It’s the birthday of American playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, born in New Orleans (1905). She spent her childhood bouncing between Upper West End Avenue in New York City and a series of genteel boarding houses run by relatives in New Orleans. She was a smart loner who took refuge in books.
Hellman was opinionated, brash, funny, and sometimes rash, as when she got into a very public spat with novelist Mary McCarthy, who went on the Dick Cavett show in 1979 and said every word Hellman ever wrote, “including ‘and’ and ‘the,’ was a ‘lie.’”

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 19, 2023

It was on this day in 1964 that the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act after a long battle in the Senate. Lyndon Johnson signed the act into law 13 days later. It was this piece of legislation that outlawed all segregation on the basis of race in the United States. The text of the law was extremely specific, listing all the places of public accommodation where segregation was forbidden, including any inn, hotel, motel, restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, gasoline station, motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 18, 2023

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney turns 75 today — born in 1942 in Liverpool, England. He is a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the recipient of 21 Grammys. His Beatles song “Yesterday” is one of the most covered songs in musical history, and he has written over 30 No. 1 songs in his life.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 17, 2023

It’s the birthday of Igor Stravinsky, born in Oranienbaum, a suburb of St. Petersburg, Russia (1882), to an opera singer father. He wasn’t a happy kid. He described his childhood as, “a period waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.” He didn’t have many friends and he didn’t do well in school, but he liked music. When he was two years old, he surprised his parents by humming from memory a folk tune he had heard some women singing.

In 1851, while Geronimo was away from home, members of the Mexican militia raided his camp and slaughtered its inhabitants — Geronimo’s mother, wife, and three children among the dead. The event inspired an intense desire for revenge in Geronimo, who spent much of his life at war with Mexican and American soldiers.