TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: Birthday of W. H. Auden, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. [1907] “Building Your Great Collection One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at BlindHorseBooks.com
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TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: Happy Birthday Toni Morrison American author, editor, and professor who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author. Her novels are known for their epic themes, exquisite language and richly detailed African-American characters who are central to their narratives which have been banned by the small-minded. Among her best-known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. “Building Your Great Collection One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at BlindHorseBooks.com
BUT DID YOU KNOW.... Darwin was an inquisitive man. Sure he was curious about nature and all that science stuff, but he's also a guy. So when he saw strange animals, he often wondered what they would taste like. The difference between Darwin and the rest of us is that he actually ate 'em! He waited more than 20 years to publish his groundbreaking theory on evolution. Darwin’s five-year voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, which ended in 1836, provided him with invaluable research that contributed to the development of his theory of evolution and natural selection. Concerned, however, about the public and ecclesiastical acceptance of his deeply radical idea, he did not present his theory of evolution until 1858 when he made a joint announcement with British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who was about to go public with a similar concept to Darwin’s. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scien...
Willems first became interested in cartoon art when he was just a child. When he was 3 or 4 he started to draw and create his own characters. Willems enjoyed writing stories about his characters to share with others. Willems after college graduation spent a year traveling around the world drawing a cartoon every day, all of which have been published in the book You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons. Returning to New York, he started his career as a writer and animator for Sesame Street, where he earned six Emmy Awards for writing during his tenure from 1993 to January 2002. Three of Willems' books have been awarded a Caldecott Honor. “Building Your Great Collection One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at BlindHorseBooks.com
TODAY’S LITERARY BIRTHDAY: Jules Verne the "Father of Science Fiction". Since he wrote sci-fi in the midst of the Victorian era, he is TRULY the first STEAMPUNKer. The French author, who pioneered the genre of science-fiction, is famed for such revolutionary science-fiction novels as 'Around the World in Eighty Days' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.' Jules Verne is one of the most influential and celebrated writers in the history of science fiction. But his novels contain more than just entertainment. His wild imagination and propensity for thorough research led not only to enthralling adventure stories, but some eerily accurate predictions in the realm of scientific advancement. Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. BUT, DID YOU KNOW:: Before he wrote stories he wrote libretti (lyrics) for operas. It's largely...
DID YA KNOW: William Burroughs coined the phrase ‘heavy metal’. The genre of loud rock music got its name from Burroughs’ 1961 novel The Soft Machine, in which a character named Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid, appears. The music world has been grateful ever since. The rock-band Steely Dan took their name from a Borroughs book, but I am going to leave that one alone, there may be kids in the room. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who wrote in the paranoid fiction genre, and his influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. While living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and out of their mutual influence grew the foundation of the Beat Generation, which was later a defining influence on the 1960s counterculture. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been p...