The Writer's Archive
This week in literary history, a poem, and a writing prompt, all in under ten minutes. Based on The Writer’s Almanac, which ended in 2017.
The 155th birthday of Grazia Deledda, the 102nd birthday of Truman Capote, and the 177th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's lost week — September 27 to October 3, 1849.
The 130th birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the 129th birthday of William Faulkner, and Banned Books Week (September 22–28).
The 110th birthday of Roald Dahl, and the 705th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri.
The 198th birthday of Leo Tolstoy, the 179th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau leaving Walden Pond, and the life and work of Rabindranath Tagore.
The 118th birthday of Richard Wright, the 118th birthday of William Saroyan, and the 158th birthday of Edgar Lee Masters.
The 155th birthday of Theodore Dreiser, the 229th birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and the 277th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The 96th birthday of Ted Hughes, the 96th birthday of Frank McCourt, and the 133rd birthday of Dorothy Parker.
The 104th birthday of Philip Larkin, the 105th birthday of Alex Haley, and the 255th birthday of Sir Walter Scott.
The 176th birthday of Guy de Maupassant, the 113th birthday of Robert Hayden, and the 217th birthday of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The 207th birthday of Herman Melville, the 102nd birthday of James Baldwin, and the 132nd birthday of Aldous Huxley.
The 151st birthday of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, the 93rd birthday of Cormac McCarthy, and the 224th birthday of Alexandre Dumas. In-depth: Alice Dunbar-Nelson: The New Orleans-born poet, journalist, editor, and activist who graduated college at seventeen, published her first book at twenty, left an abusive marriage while strategically keeping her ex-husband's famous name, founded a school for Black girls in Delaware, lobbied for anti-lynching legislation, and worked across every form that was open to her with the same unflinching precision. Cormac McCarthy: The Providence-born novelist who moved to Tennessee as a child, refused every literary-world convention for decades, lived in self-imposed poverty while writing some of the most celebrated American prose of the twentieth century, and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize — then bought a replacement for his auctioned typewriter for less than $20. Alexandre Dumas: The French novelist who grew up in poverty after his father — a general-in-chief born in Haiti and the grandson of an enslaved woman — was denied his pension by Napoleon's government. Dumas turned his father's suppressed story into The Count of Monte Cristo , became the most widely read French author in the world, and waited 132 years after his death to be interred in the Panthéon. Poem: "I Sit and Sew" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Public Domain — The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer , 1920; first published in AME Church Review, 1918). Writing Prompt: Dunbar-Nelson's poem works through constraint — the speaker is physically held in place while her imagination and desire rage. McCarthy's characters often move through landscapes that seem to hold no place for them. Dumas's father was a general denied a pension, his story suppressed for two centuries. This week, write a scene in which a character wants something they cannot have — not because it doesn't exist, but because something external won't allow it. Support the Show: Like, follow, subscribe. Sources: Academy of American Poets: "I Sit and Sew" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Verbatim Text, public domain) Poetry Foundation: Alice Dunbar-Nelson Academy of American Poets: Alice Dunbar-Nelson Biography Britannica: Alice Dunbar-Nelson Britannica: Cormac McCarthy Quote Investigator: "Books are made out of books" — McCarthy 1992 NYT interview confirmed Wikipedia: Cormac McCarthy Wikipedia: Alexandre Dumas Wikiquote: Alexandre Dumas — "My father was a mulatto" quote confirmed (response to racist insult) BlackPast.org: Alexandre Dumas biography Public Domain Author Archive Links: Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Portrait via Wikimedia Commons) Cormac McCarthy (Photo via Wikimedia Commons) Alexandre Dumas (Portrait via Wikimedia Commons).
The 122nd birthday of Pablo Neruda, the 92nd birthday of Wole Soyinka, the 107th birthday of Iris Murdoch, and the 209th birthday of Henry David Thoreau.