Dec 02 2025
Born on December 2, 1963, Ann Patchett has built one of the most admired careers in contemporary American literature by returning again and again to the ways people become connected to one another. Families form and fracture. Strangers are placed together under extraordinary circumstances. Sisters and brothers spend decades retelling the same childhood. Old friendships …
Dec 01 2025
Born on December 1, 1869, George Sterling was once one of the most celebrated poets on the American West Coast. He was a protégé of Ambrose Bierce, a close friend of Jack London, a mentor to younger writers including Clark Ashton Smith, a fixture of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, and one of the figures most …
Nov 30 2025
Born on November 30, 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens would eventually become Mark Twain, one of the most recognizable voices in American literature. He was a printer, steamboat pilot, miner, journalist, lecturer, novelist, travel writer, publisher, businessman, inventor, humorist, and political critic whose life carried him from a tiny Missouri village to stages and drawing rooms …
Nov 29 2025
Born on November 29, 1832, Louisa May Alcott grew up in a family overflowing with books, ideals, experiments, famous friends, and financial problems. Her father believed that education could transform humanity. Her mother believed just as strongly in abolition, women’s rights, and practical reform. Their daughters were encouraged to think independently, read widely, spend time …
Nov 27 2025
Born on November 27, 1960, in Racine, Wisconsin, Kevin Henkes has spent more than four decades creating books that understand something adults sometimes forget: childhood emotions do not feel small to the child experiencing them. A favorite blanket can seem essential to survival. A teacher’s criticism can ruin an otherwise wonderful day. A new baby …
Nov 26 2025
Born on November 26, 1943, in Sandpoint, Idaho, Marilynne Robinson has built one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary American literature. Her novels are quiet in ways that can initially seem almost old-fashioned. Ministers sit at kitchen tables. Sisters return to childhood homes. Families carry grievances through decades. People make coffee, tend …
Nov 25 2025
Born on November 25, 1924, Takaaki Yoshimoto became one of the most influential and difficult-to-classify figures in postwar Japanese intellectual life. He began as a poet, trained as an engineer, worked in industry, emerged as a fierce literary critic, challenged both conservative nationalism and established Marxist thought, influenced a generation of radical students, developed ambitious …
Nov 24 2025
Born on November 24, 1849, Frances Hodgson Burnett became one of the most successful writers of her era, producing more than forty novels and plays over a career that stretched from Victorian Britain into the modern twentieth century. Yet the books that secured her lasting place in literary history are stories about children whose lives …
Nov 23 2025
Born on November 23, 1496, in Cahors, Clément Marot lived at one of the most fascinating turning points in French literary history. The elaborate poetic traditions of the late Middle Ages were still very much alive when he began writing, but Renaissance humanism, Italian literary influence, religious reform, print culture, and the increasingly powerful court …
Nov 22 2025
Once the Thanksgiving meal is finished, the leftovers are packed away, and everyone has reached the point where moving from the couch feels unnecessarily ambitious, a family movie can be exactly what the afternoon needs. The challenge is finding Thanksgiving movies that actually work for children. There are plenty of famous Thanksgiving films for adults, …
