Sep 18 2026
Born on September 18, 1933, Christopher Ricks has spent more than seven decades doing something deceptively simple: paying extraordinarily close attention to words. That attention has taken him from John Milton and John Keats to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Bob Dylan. Along the way, Ricks became one of the most …
Sep 13 2026
On September 13, we celebrate the birthday of Else Holmelund Minarik, the Danish-born American author who gave generations of beginning readers one of children’s literature’s most comforting companions: Little Bear. Born on September 13, 1920, in Fredericia, Denmark, Minarik came to the United States as a small child, learned a new language, became a teacher, …
Sep 09 2026
Every September 9 offers an opportunity to remember Cesare Pavese, one of the most important and influential Italian writers of the twentieth century. A novelist, poet, translator, critic, editor, and diarist, Pavese helped reshape modern Italian literature during a period marked by Fascism, war, political upheaval, and profound cultural change. Born on September 9, 1908, …
Sep 08 2026
Every September 8 offers an opportunity to celebrate Terry Tempest Williams, an American writer whose work has spent decades exploring the complicated relationships between people, landscapes, families, communities, and the wild places they inherit. Born on September 8, 1955, Williams has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American environmental literature. Her books …
Sep 06 2026
Every September 6 offers an opportunity to remember Robert M. Pirsig, the American writer and philosopher whose Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance transformed a father-and-son road trip into one of the most unusual philosophical journeys in modern literature. Born Robert Maynard Pirsig on September 6, 1928, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pirsig spent much of …
Sep 04 2026
Every September 4 offers an opportunity to remember Richard Wright, the American novelist, memoirist, essayist, journalist, poet, and intellectual whose writing forced millions of readers to confront realities of racism, poverty, segregation, violence, and restricted opportunity that American culture had often ignored or distorted. Born on September 4, 1908, near Natchez, Mississippi, Wright emerged from …
Sep 03 2026
Every September 3 offers an opportunity to remember Sergei Dovlatov, the Russian writer and journalist whose deceptively simple prose transformed failed careers, bureaucratic absurdities, prison camps, unhappy marriages, drunken evenings, emigration, and ordinary disappointment into some of the funniest and saddest literature of the late twentieth century. Born on September 3, 1941, Dovlatov spent much …
Sep 01 2026
On September 1, we celebrate the birthday of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the American novelist whose imagination carried generations of readers into jungles, beneath the surface of the Earth, across lost prehistoric worlds, and all the way to Mars. Born in Chicago on September 1, 1875, Burroughs became one of the great architects of twentieth-century popular …
Aug 31 2026
On August 31, we celebrate the birthday of Amrita Pritam, one of the most influential literary voices of twentieth-century South Asia. Born on August 31, 1919, Pritam wrote through a century marked by enormous political upheaval, displacement, changing expectations for women, and the painful division of the Punjab she loved. She became a poet, novelist, …
Aug 30 2026
On August 30, we celebrate the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the English novelist whose imagination gave the world one of literature’s most enduring creations. Born on August 30, 1797, Mary Shelley lived only 53 years, yet the story she began writing as a teenager has survived for more than two centuries. Frankenstein; or, The …
