Aug 28 2026
On August 28, we celebrate the birthday of Rita Dove, one of the most accomplished and influential American poets of the past half-century. Born on August 28, 1952, in Akron, Ohio, Dove has built a literary career remarkable not only for its honors, but for its range. She has written poetry, fiction, short stories, essays, …
Aug 27 2026
On August 27, we celebrate the birthday of András Petőcz, a Hungarian poet, novelist, essayist, editor, and experimental artist whose career has spent more than four decades exploring what language can do. Born in Budapest on August 27, 1959, Petőcz emerged from Hungary’s literary avant-garde during the early 1980s. Poetry may have provided the foundation …
Aug 26 2026
On August 26, we celebrate the birthday of Nikky Finney, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American poetry. Born on August 26, 1957, in Conway, South Carolina, Finney has spent more than four decades writing poems that refuse to separate the personal from the historical. Family memory, Black history, the American South, race, …
Aug 25 2026
Born on August 25, 1910, Dorothea Tanning built one of the most fascinating creative lives of the twentieth century. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, costume and set designer, novelist, memoirist, and poet—and she resisted being confined to any one of those identities. Tanning is most often introduced as a Surrealist, and some of her …
Aug 24 2026
On August 24, we remember one of the most distinctive literary minds of the modern era: A. S. Byatt, the British novelist, critic, essayist, and storyteller whose richly imaginative books seemed to contain whole libraries within their pages. Born Antonia Susan Drabble on August 24, 1936, Byatt would have celebrated her 90th birthday today. She …
Aug 23 2026
On August 23, we celebrate the birthday of Nazik al-Malaika, the Iraqi poet, critic, scholar, and literary innovator whose work helped reshape modern Arabic poetry. Born in Baghdad on August 23, 1923, al-Malaika became one of the defining literary voices of the 20th-century Arab world. She is particularly remembered as one of the pioneers of …
Aug 22 2026
Some writers leave behind a famous book. Others leave behind a voice so unmistakable that, decades later, you can still hear it arriving before they do. Dorothy Parker belongs to the second category. There is the quick intelligence, of course. The devastating observation. The elegant little sentence that appears perfectly civilized until you realize it …
Aug 21 2026
Some writers make their mark with a single celebrated book. Others quietly work their way into the literary landscape until their influence seems to be everywhere—on bookshelves, in classrooms, in anthologies, and in the memories of readers who may not even realize how often they have encountered their words. X. J. Kennedy belonged to the …
Aug 20 2026
Every August 20 offers an opportunity to remember Salvatore Quasimodo, the Sicilian-born poet, translator, critic, and Nobel laureate whose work moved from intensely private meditations on memory and exile toward some of the most powerful poetry of war and moral responsibility in twentieth-century Italy. Born on August 20, 1901, in Modica, Sicily, Quasimodo became one …
Aug 18 2026
Every August 18 offers an opportunity to remember Elsa Morante, one of the most original, fiercely independent, and emotionally powerful voices in twentieth-century Italian literature. Born in Rome on August 18, 1912, Morante built a body of work unlike that of almost any of her contemporaries. Her novels move freely between realism and fantasy, childhood …
