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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 21, 2024

Posted on November 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of anthologist and writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, born in Cornwall in 1863. Quiller-Couch published fiction and literary criticism under the pen name “Q” and was best known at the time for his publication of the Oxford Book of English Verse (1250-1900), a book that remained the most popular anthology of its kind for nearly 70 years.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Posted on November 20, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the novelist Nadine Gordimer, born in Springs, South Africa (1923), who grew up in a middle-class white community near a gold mine where all the black workers were forced to live in a windowless barracks, guarded by police. She never thought about who those miners were or what their lives were like until the day she read Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, and she began to see the similarities between the meat packers in the book and the miners in her town.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Posted on November 19, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of best-selling poet Sharon Olds, born in San Francisco on this day in 1942. Her collections include Satan Says (1980), The Dead and the Living (1984), The Gold Cell (1987), The Matter of This World (1987), The Sign of Saturn (1991), The Father (1992), The Wellspring (1996), Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Unswept Room (2002), Strike Sparks (2004), and One Secret Thing (2008). Since she began publishing in the 1980s, her poems have appeared in more than 100 poetry anthologies.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 18, 2024

Posted on November 18, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist and poet Margaret Atwood, born in Ottawa, Ontario (1939). During her childhood, her family spent every April through November in the Quebec wilderness, where her father, an entomologist, did research for the government. She was 11 years old before she completed a full year of school. When she was about six, she began to write morality plays, comic books, poems, and a novel about an ant that she never finished.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 17, 2024

Posted on November 17, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this date in 1970, Douglas Engelbart received a patent for the first computer mouse. He was working at the Stanford Research Institute when he first conceived the idea in the 1960s. Ever on the lookout for ways to benefit humanity, his research focus was on augmenting human intelligence through computers, and he wanted to develop easy, intuitive ways for people to interact with technology.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 16, 2024

Posted on November 16, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the “First Lady of Radio,” mostly forgotten today, Mary Margaret McBride, born in Paris, Missouri (1899). She was one of the first radio interviewers to bring the techniques of newspaper journalism to the airwaves, and in the first 20 years of her syndicated program, she interviewed more than 30,000 guests from the world of politics, literature, arts, and entertainment. In the late 1940s, she had 6 million daily listeners.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 15, 2024

Posted on November 15, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (1887). She studied art in college and then supported herself teaching art at various colleges, but she found that teaching left her no time for her own work, and the turpentine smell of the art classrooms made her sick.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 14, 2024

Posted on November 14, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1851, Harper & Brothers published Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, about a ship captain named Ahab who is obsessed with hunting the great white sperm whale that took his leg. The book had been published in Britain in October with the title The Whale; Melville’s decision to change the title didn’t get there in time. The American version of the book had crowded pages and ugly binding, but the English version was done in three beautiful volumes with bright blue and white covers.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Posted on November 13, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1850). He began to suffer from a lung disease at a very early age. He said, “My recollections of the long nights when I was kept awake by coughing are only relieved by thoughts of the tenderness of my nurse.” His nurse stayed up with him at night when he couldn’t sleep and told him all kinds of stories about ghosts and monsters and pirates.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Posted on November 12, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1980, the NASA space probe Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn. Of course, “close” is a relative term; in this case, the spacecraft was 40,000 miles from the top of the gas giant’s cloud layer. But it gave scientists their best opportunity to study the planet’s most famous feature: its spectacular rings.

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