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 …
Aug 17 2026
Every August 17 offers an opportunity to remember Ted Hughes, one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in twentieth-century British poetry. Born in Yorkshire in 1930, Hughes created a poetic world filled with hawks, foxes, crows, pike, rivers, horses, storms, farms, ancient myths, dreams, violence, and the mysterious energies he believed moved beneath ordinary …
Aug 16 2026
Every August 16 offers an opportunity to remember Charles Bukowski, the German-born American poet, novelist, short-story writer, and columnist who transformed cheap apartments, post-office shifts, racetracks, factory jobs, bars, failed relationships, loneliness, and the streets of Los Angeles into one of the most recognizable literary worlds of the twentieth century. Born in 1920 and raised …
Aug 15 2026
Born on this day, August 15, 1912, Julia Child would become one of the most unlikely—and most beloved—revolutionaries in American food. She did not grow up dreaming of becoming a chef. She did not attend culinary school as a teenager or inherit a family restaurant. In fact, Julia was well into her thirties before food …
Aug 14 2026
Born on August 14, 1860, Ernest Thompson Seton spent much of his life trying to persuade people that wild animals possessed lives worth understanding. He was a writer, wildlife artist, naturalist, storyteller, outdoors educator, conservation advocate, and one of the important figures behind the early development of the Boy Scouts of America. Long before wildlife …
Aug 13 2026
Born on August 13, 1899, Alfred Hitchcock became one of the most recognizable and influential directors in film history. His name became so closely associated with suspense that simply describing a movie as “Hitchcockian” can conjure an entire atmosphere: an innocent person under suspicion, a seemingly ordinary place concealing something sinister, a dangerous secret, a …
Aug 12 2026
Born on August 12, 1925, Donald Justice became one of the quiet masters of twentieth-century American poetry—a writer whose influence was felt not only through his own meticulously crafted poems, but through generations of poets who passed through his classrooms. Justice never built the kind of public persona that turns a poet into a celebrity. …
Aug 11 2026
Born on August 11, 1897, Louise Bogan became one of the most accomplished American lyric poets and literary critics of the twentieth century. Her body of poetry was relatively small, especially when compared with writers who published book after book across long careers, but Bogan believed deeply in concentration. She revised relentlessly, distrusted excess, and …
Aug 10 2026
Born on August 10, 1953, Mark Doty has spent his career asking what it means to look closely at a world we know we cannot keep. A jellyfish floating in shallow water, an old painting, a city street, a dog walking beside us, a market display, a piece of fabric, a garden, a body altered …
Aug 09 2026
Every August 9 offers an opportunity to remember Philip Larkin, the English poet, novelist, librarian, jazz critic, and reluctant literary celebrity whose poems made ordinary life feel worthy of the closest possible attention. Born in Coventry, England, in 1922, Larkin became one of the most widely read British poets of the twentieth century despite publishing …
