Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts

Saturday, April 30, 2022

Apr. 30: Annie Dillard, American writer

BORN APRIL 30:

Annie Dillard (1945 - ) is an American writer whose Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It is a first-person account of the narrator's explorations near her home with various contemplations on nature and life. It is divided into four sections, each indicating a season of a single year. It is based on Dillard's personal journals; it should come as no surprise to learn that her master's thesis was about Thoreau's Walden. Tinker Creek itself is outside Roanoke, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She taught for over 20 years at Wesleyan University; in addition to Pilgrim she has written poetry, two novels, essays, prose, literary criticism, and one memoir.

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Thursday, April 28, 2022

Apr. 28: Harper Lee, American novelist

BORN APRIL 28:

(Nelle) Harper Lee (1926-2016) was an American novelist. When her first (and almost only) novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 1960 (and won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), she was not an unknown in the publishing world. She was a lifelong friend of Truman Capote ("Dill" in TKAM was based on him). His first novel was published in 1948, and Breakfast at Tiffany's ten years later; she lived near him in Manhattan, and accompanied him to Kansas to do the research on In Cold Blood. At Christmas in 1956, friends gave her a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." What she wrote was a mangled manuscript called Go Set a Watchman. With the help of seasoned editor Tay Hohoff at Lippincott, it became the polished To Kill a Mockingbird, a book which she said was not a "coming of age" story but a look at the irrational prejudices of adults as seen through the eyes of children. She was never to publish another novel until in 2015, HarperCollins announced it would publish Go Set a Watchman, first described as a "sequel" to TKAM, but later admitted to be an early draft. Allegations that unscrupulous background players (a lawyer, an agent, etc.) coerced Lee into doing what she said she never would--publish another novel--were never proven, though it is suspicious that this all happened just two and a half months after her sister--a lawyer who had been her protector--passed away. (I refuse to read it, not least because it portrays my one of my fictional heroes, Atticus Finch, as something of a racist.)

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Monday, April 25, 2022

Apr. 25: Ella Fitzgerald, American jazz singer

BORN APRIL 25:

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) was an American jazz singer who got saddled with silly nicknames like "the First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella." These don't come close to expressing the purity of her voice or her masterful phrasing, timing, and intonation. Her ability to improvise (including "scat singing") put her in a class by herself. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" with the Chick Webb orchestra put her on the map; her association with manager Norman Granz led to the formation of Verve Records to produce her music. She did movies and TV guest spots, and had long, fruitful collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots among others. She gave her last performance at age 76 and died three years later in poor health, having received fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It's impossible to pick out single performances, but try "Mr. Paganini," "How High the Moon," and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" for starters.

#TJBLCalendar

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Sunday, April 17, 2022

Apr. 17: Isak Dinesen, Danish author

BORN APRIL 17:

Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) was a Danish author who wrote novels, poems, and short stories, and was known for Out of Africa; Seven Gothic Tales; and "Babette's Feast." She was a woman of many names: born Karen Dinesen, "Isak" is a pen name, as was Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel. She married Baron Bror Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke, and ended up with the weighty name Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke. "Isak Dinesen" will do nicely. Out of Africa, which became a film starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford that won Best Picture and Best Director (Sydney Pollack) Oscars, was based on her life while living in Kenya (1914-1931); the film version of her story "Babette's Feast" won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

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Monday, April 4, 2022

Apr. 4: Maya Angelou, American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist

BORN APRIL 4:

Maya Angelou (1928-2014), born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist who published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry. She is also credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. The first of her autobiographies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells of her life up to the age of 17 and and is widely read in high schools and colleges (perhaps more than any other book by an African American woman)--and widely challenged for its unvarnished portrayal of violence and sexuality, and use of "crude" language. Angelou has received numerous honors, including reciting her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

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Friday, March 25, 2022

Mar. 25: Flannery O'Connor, American writer

BORN MARCH 25:

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist who wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as other works. She often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on misfits in regional settings. A staunch Roman Catholic, she frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. Her novel Wise Blood is about a wounded returning WWII vet and how he copes with his loss of religious faith; the other one, The Violent Bear It Away, tells of a fourteen-year-old boy trying to escape his uncle's plans to make him a religious "prophet." Two of her short stories stand out: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (her best-known work) examines morality through the encounter of a family with an escaped convict. "Everything That Rises Must Converge" tells of the experience of a boy and his mother on a bus after the integration of their city's transportation system.

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Thursday, March 17, 2022

Mar. 17: Kate Greenaway, English Victorian children's book artist and writer

BORN MARCH 17:

Catherine "Kate" Greenaway (1846-1901) was an English Victorian artist and writer, known for her children's book illustrations. Starting out as a creator of the new-fangled greeting card, she received her first commission to illustrate a children's book in 1867. She published her breakout book, Under the Window, in 1879, and sold over 100,000 copies. It was one of only two books that she wrote (the other is Marigold Garden, 1885) though she illustrated over 150 as a result of something called the "Greenaway vogue," and she became widely imitated. She died of breast cancer at the age of 55. The Kate Greenaway Medal was established in her honor in 1955, awarded annually in the UK to an illustrator of children's books.

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Thursday, March 10, 2022

Mar. 10: Ina Donna Coolbrith, American poet, writer, and mentor

BORN MARCH 10:

Ina Donna Coolbrith (1841-1928) was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. She was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state. Niece of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, she moved to Los Angeles and then San Francisco, writing for editor Bret Harte on the magazine Overland Monthly. Her poetry was praised by the likes of Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and Tennyson. As City Librarian of Oakland, she mentored young readers including Jack London and Isadora Duncan. You may never have heard of her, but she knew virtually every California writer of her day. She herself wrote the somewhat maudlin "The Mother's Grief" and "When the Grass Shall Cover Me"; and "Copa De Oro (California Poppy)," a paean to a wildflower, among many others.

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Friday, February 18, 2022

Feb. 18: Toni Morrison, American novelist

BORN FEBRUARY 18:

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was an American novelist whose book about a haunted home, Beloved, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize; a few years later she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her books address the harsh consequences of racism in the U.S.; Song of Solomon, about the life of an African-American man in Michigan; The Bluest Eye, about the aspirations of an "ugly" black girl to have blue eyes--thus becoming "white"--in 1941; and eight more. Highly decorated, including receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, she also wrote children's books, short fiction, plays, poetry, and non-fiction.

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Sunday, February 13, 2022

Feb. 13: Elaine Pagels, American historian of religion

BORN FEBRUARY 13:

Elaine Pagels (1943 - ) is an American historian of religion at Princeton University, specializing in early Christianity and Gnosticism. Her 1979 best-seller The Gnostic Gospels opened the eyes of many to both the variety of thought available to early Christians and the viability of female scholars in the field. Later works include Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity, a radical view of attitudes toward women in religious history; and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, which contrasts Thomas with the Gospel of John.

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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Feb. 9: Alice Walker, American author and activist

BORN FEBRUARY 9:

Alice Walker (1944) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983), for her third novel (of seven?), The Color Purple. The frequently-censored epistolary novel follows the life of Celie, a poor, uneducated 14-year-old girl living in the Southern U.S. in the early 1900s. It was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg (nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including Whoopi Goldberg for Best Actress as Celie, and Oprah Winfrey for Best Supporting Actress, but won none) and a musical on Broadway.

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Thursday, February 3, 2022

Feb. 3: Gertrude Stein, American author and patron

BORN FEBRUARY 3:

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American novelist, poet, playwright and patron of the arts. Based in Paris from 1903, she and her brother Leo encouraged modern artists, and ran the "Stein salon" whose regular attendees included Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, and Henri Matisse. This had a greater impact than her books, which included most famously The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a sort of memoir of her Paris years in the voice of her life partner, Alice B. Toklas.

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Friday, January 28, 2022

Jan. 28: Colette, French novelist

BORN JANUARY 28:

Colette (1873-1954) French novelist who wrote Gigi, about a sixteen-year-old trained to catch a wealthy lover but who married him instead. With her first husband Henry Gauthier-Villars (known as "Willy"), she co-wrote the four novels known as the "Claudine stories," purporting to be the diary of a fifteen-year-old girl growing to adulthood. How much was written by Willy (under whose name the books first appeared) and how much by Collette (a model for the protagonist) has never been determined.

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Monday, January 24, 2022

Jan. 24: Edith Wharton, American writer

BORN JANUARY 24:

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) American novelist and short story writer who portrayed the lives and morals of the upper classes of New York in the "Gilded Age." Major works include The House of Mirth; Ethan Frome; and The Age of Innocence (won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1920)

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Sunday, January 9, 2022

Jan. 9: Simone de Beauvoir, French writer and philosopher

BORN JANUARY 9:

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) French novelist, philosopher, and pioneering feminist (though she would have rejected the label); She Came to Stay; The Second Sex; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.

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Friday, January 7, 2022

Jan. 7: Zora Neale Hurston, American writer

BORN JANUARY 7:

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) American novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist whose work slid into obscurity for decades; interest was revived partly through the efforts of author Alice Walker. Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God; folklore collection Mules and Men; play (co-written with Langston Hughes) Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life.

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Thursday, December 16, 2021

Dec. 16: Jane Austen, British novelist

BORN DECEMBER 16:

Jane Austen (1775-1817) revered English novelist known for the biting irony, realism, sense of humor, and social commentary revealed in her six major novels: Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; and Persuasion.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Dec. 14: Shirley Jackson, American writer

BORN DECEMBER 14:

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) American novelist and short story writer; The Haunting of Hill House; "Charles"; "The Lottery." It's hard to believe that the whimsical "Charles," about a kid who gets away with figurative murder, could come from the same mind that produced "The Lottery," about literal ritualized murder. But there it is.

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Friday, December 10, 2021

Dec. 10: Emily Dickinson, American poet

BORN DECEMBER 10:

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) "The Belle of Amherst," American poet who wrote nearly 1800 short poems. Many of her works are virtually indecipherable for most of us. Easiest of access are poems like "There is no frigate like a book"; "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"; "Because I could not stop for death"; "I taste a liquor never brewed"; "I like to see it lap the Miles"; etc.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Dec. 7: Willa Cather, American author

BORN DECEMBER 7:

Willa Cather (1873-1947) American author primarily of the Great Plains more or less around the turn of the 20th century, such as O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. My personal favorite is Death Comes for the Archbishop, set in my beloved Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her novel, One of Ours--set during World War I and moving from a Nebraska farm to the battlefields of France--won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature (1923)

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