Sep 17 2026
Born on September 17, 1883, William Carlos Williams spent much of his life proving that poetry did not need grand subjects, distant places, or elaborate language to be meaningful. A wheelbarrow, a fire engine passing through a rainy city, weeds beside a hospital, or a note left on a kitchen table could all become poetry …
Sep 16 2026
Breyten Breytenbach was a South African poet, writer, painter, teacher, and political activist whose long creative life unfolded across languages, continents, prisons, studios, classrooms, and states of exile. Born on September 16, 1939, in Bonnievale in South Africa’s Western Cape, Breytenbach became one of the most distinctive voices in modern Afrikaans literature. He helped reshape …
Sep 15 2026
Every September 15 offers an opportunity to remember Gunnar Ekelöf, one of the most original, restless, and influential poets in twentieth-century Swedish literature. Born in Stockholm on September 15, 1907, Ekelöf helped transform Swedish poetry through a career that moved from surrealism and modernist rebellion toward philosophical meditation, mysticism, memory, music, Byzantine history, and a …
Sep 14 2026
Francisco de Quevedo was one of the sharpest, most inventive, and most complicated literary voices of Spain’s Golden Age. Born in Madrid on September 14, 1580, he became celebrated for poetry that could move from intense reflections on love and mortality to merciless satire, as well as for prose that exposed vanity, hypocrisy, social ambition, …
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 12 2026
On September 12, we remember Marya Zaturenska, the Ukrainian-born American poet whose journey from an immigrant childhood and factory work to the Pulitzer Prize is one of the more remarkable stories in twentieth-century American poetry. Born in Kyiv in 1902, when the city was part of the Russian Empire, Zaturenska arrived in the United States …
Sep 11 2026
Every September 11 offers an opportunity to revisit D.H. Lawrence, one of the most provocative, restless, and fiercely individual voices in twentieth-century English literature. Born David Herbert Lawrence on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, Lawrence emerged from a working-class mining community to become an internationally known novelist, poet, essayist, travel writer, playwright, critic, …
Sep 10 2026
Every September 10 offers a fitting reason to return to Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet whose writing encouraged generations of readers to notice the world around them more closely. Born on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio, Oliver built an extraordinary literary career from subjects that could easily seem ordinary: a bird …
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 07 2026
Every September 7 offers an opportunity to rediscover Elinor Wylie, an American poet and novelist whose brief life contained enough literary ambition, personal upheaval, beauty, controversy, and reinvention for several lifetimes. Born Elinor Morton Hoyt on September 7, 1885, Wylie became one of the most recognizable literary figures of the 1920s. Her carefully crafted poems …
