Sep 05 2026
Every September 5 offers an opportunity to remember Nicanor Parra, the Chilean poet, physicist, mathematician, teacher, and literary provocateur who spent much of his extraordinarily long life trying to knock poetry off its pedestal. Born on September 5, 1914, Parra became one of the most influential Latin American poets of the twentieth century by deliberately …
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 02 2026
Every September 2 offers an opportunity to remember Eugene Field, the American poet, humorist, journalist, and storyteller whose lullabies and poems about childhood became familiar to generations of readers. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, Field became especially famous for poems such as “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” “Little Boy Blue,” “The Sugar-Plum Tree,” and …
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 29 2026
On August 29, we remember Thom Gunn, the British-born poet who spent much of his adult life in San Francisco and created one of the most distinctive bodies of poetry of the late 20th century. Born on August 29, 1929, in Gravesend, Kent, England, Gunn belonged to a generation of writers coming of age after …
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 …
