It’s the birthday of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918, #diedtooyoung), best known for a single poem, “Trees” (1913), which begins, “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” His memory also lives on in the Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest held every year at Columbia University, [...]
It’s the birthday of journalist, food and travel writer, memoirist, humorist, and “deadline poet” Calvin Trillin (b. 1935), perhaps best known for his many articles and essays for The New Yorker and for collections like Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin (2011), which won the 2012 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Trillin was born in Kansas [...]
It’s the birthday of suspense writer Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968), who was considered merely one of the better—not the best—noir novelists of the 1940s and 50s, but a bazillion of whose stories were adapted for the screen, including the story on which Rear Window is based (1954, Alfred Hitchcock). Woolrich was born in New York City [...]
It’s the birthday of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), the Polish-born author who did not learn any English until his twenties and then went on to become one of the greatest novelists in the English language. (This is crazy hard to do. Attaining native-like proficiency in a second—actually Conrad’s third—language is nearly always impossible for someone who [...]
It’s the birthday of Mark Twain (1835-1910), often called the father of American literature and sometimes credited as the author of the first great American novel (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885). (NB: The term “great American novel” was coined by a novelist named John William DeForest in 1868, which predates Huck Finn. DeForest believed [...]
It’s the birthday of the man whose most beloved book opens, “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.” Thus begins The Lion, The Witch, and the [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for November 28, 2018 It’s the birthday of poet, artist, and engraver William Blake (1757-1827), one of the most original of the Romantic Poets and someone who saw 100% more angels than most people do. Blake was born (and later died) in London to James and Catherine Blake. He was one of [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for November 27, 2018 It’s the birthday of noted children’s book author and illustrator Kevin Henkes (b. 1960), whose books have won numerous awards, including a Caldecott Medal for Kitten’s First Full Moon (2004). Henkes was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the fourth of five children, an experience he credits with teaching him [...]
It’s the birthday of author and Christian thinker Marilynne Robinson (b. 1943), one of the U.S.’s great novelists and intellectuals, best known for two very different novels, Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004), the latter of which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Robinson (originally Summers) was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the great Victorian novelists, George Eliot (a.k.a. Mary Ann Cross Evans, 1819-1880), known for brilliant novels such as Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871-72), but whose birthday this year falls on Thanksgiving and therefore will not receive the attention that is her due. But for goodness’ sake, if you [...]
It’s the birthday of South African author and Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014, #nicelonglife), who never set out to be a political writer but whose novels helped expose the horrors of apartheid. Gordimer was born in the mining town of Springs in northeastern South Africa, near Johannesburg and Pretoria. Her parents were both Jewish immigrants [...]
It’s the birthday of poet and critic Allen Tate (1899-1979), whose poetry was somewhat formal, intellectual, and rooted in the South, and who looked exactly like someone your parents would have bought life insurance from. Tate was born in Winchester, Kentucky, and attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville. While there, he joined a group of poets [...]