Susan’s Almanac Project for March 18, 2020 Hello, everyone! Are you all okay out there and practicing social distancing? Stay well; we can do this! I'm hoping to do more original posts very soon, but this is a re-post from last year on one of the U.S.'s most prominent authors ever. If you're an Updike [...]
It’s the birthday of Frank Morrison Spillane, better known as Mickey Spillane, writer of the Mike Hammer detective series and mid-life convert to (I am not making this up) the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Spillane was born in 1918 in Brooklyn, New York, and after high school worked at various jobs: lifeguarding, performing with a circus, and [...]
It’s the birthday of internationally acclaimed writer Colum McCann (b. 1965), author of three story collections and six novels, including the international bestsellers Let the Great World Spin (2009) and Transatlantic (2013). McCann was born and raised in Ireland, where he started out as a journalist in The Irish Press. He moved to the U.S. [...]
It’s the birthday of an author said by Eleanor Roosevelt to be “one of the ten most influential women in the United States,” Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958), who brought the Montessori Method to the U.S., wrote 40 books of fiction and nonfiction, and most importantly wrote one of my all-time favorite children’s novels, Understood Betsy [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the bestselling authors of all time, Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007, #nicelonglife), who wrote movie screenplays like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie before becoming a suspense novelist who would sell 300 million books. (I’m way too young for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, but [...]
It’s the birthday of bestselling children’s book author/illustrator Mark Teague (b. 1963), perhaps best known for illustrating the rollicking How Do Dinosaurs…? series (author Jane Yolen), illustrating the beloved Poppleton series (author Cynthia Rylant), and writing and illustrating the wildly popular Dear Mrs. LaRue series. (If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading a Teague [...]
NB: This is a re-post from last year. Hard to find an author with more interesting life details than Christopher Marlowe. It’s the birthday (possibly) of Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593, #diedtooyoung), who would be considered the greatest Elizabethan poet and dramatist if William Shakespeare hadn’t gotten all grabby about it. Marlowe’s great contribution was his creation [...]
It’s the birthday of Anton Chekhov (b. 1860), renowned short story author, playwright, and most popular answer ever to the question, “Who has influenced your writing?” (One of my favorite Sidney Harris cartoons makes this point best; see it here.) Chekhov broke with tradition to downplay plot for the sake of artlessly simple portrayals in [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1706, a man who may have done more to shape the (eventual) United States than any other single person. Franklin was a printer and publisher, author, statesman, diplomat, inventor, scientist, the first U.S. Postmaster General, [...]
It’s the birthday of Southern writer Anne Rivers Siddons (1936-2019), who wrote 19 novels, many of them bestsellers, and has been called “the Jane Austen of modern Atlanta” (critic Bob Summer). Siddons was born in the small town of Fairburn, Georgia, to parents who were a lawyer and a secretary and had a traditional Southern [...]
TRIGGER WARNING: If the copy of The Prophet given to you upon your high school graduation eons ago is dogeared and worn from constant use, go to a safe space before reading today’s post. Someplace with bubbles and puppies. It’s the birthday of Lebanese American author Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), best known to English readers for [...]
(While reading today’s post, whether silently or out loud, please pronounce all names with a heavy Italian accent.) It’s the birthday of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449 – 1492), also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler of Florence from 1478 to 1492 and a great patron of the arts during the Italian Renaissance, supporting the likes [...]