Mar 11 2022
Famous for his books The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), as well as Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), writer Douglas Adams was born on this day March 11, 1952 in Cambridge, England. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended …
Feb 27 2022
American author John Steinbeck was born on this day February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. His most well known works are his novels Tortilla Flat (1935), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Cannery Row …
Feb 11 2022
Elsa Beskow has written and illustrated over 40 published children’s books, and is a beloved storyteller in her home country of Sweden, where she was born on February 11, 1874. Having entertained scores of children as well as adults for over a hundred years, Beskow is also known as the ‘Beatrix Potter’ of Scandinavia. Elsa …
Feb 05 2022
Today is the birthday of one of America’s most prominent Beat Generation writers, William S. Burroughs, who was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1914. Burroughs was born into a wealthy family and studied English and anthropology at Harvard, and then went to medical school in Vienna. In 1943, Burroughs met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and the three …
Jan 31 2022
Best known for his numerous short stories and the novels Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8, writer John O’Hara was born on this day January 31, 1905 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. “A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in …
Jan 29 2022
American author and environmental activist Edward Abbey was born January 29, 1927 in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He spent much of his life exploring nature and working as a ranger for several national parks, including working for the United States National Park Service at Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in early 1960s, Florida Everglades in 1965, …
Jan 28 2022
The Grass The centuries are lined up in a box of matches.I’ll buy. I have an eight-pence. The sun is blueat the star’s window Midnight danceswith the fairy as a tendril A little green at the ear, I dream of the alphabet. -Marcel Broodthaers
Jan 27 2022
Jabberwocky ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought—So rested he …
Jan 25 2022
Here is a poem which Bob Dylan cited as his single biggest inspiration, “A Red, Red Rose,” written by Robert Burns. Burns was born on January 25, 1759 in the Scottish village of Alloway. A Red, Red Rose O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June;O my Luve is like …
Jan 24 2022
My little old doga heart-beatat my feet -Edith Wharton