A Writer's Moment: 'Be brave enough to speak the truth'

A Writer's Moment: 'Be brave enough to speak the truth':   “ Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.  You must then live it to its fullest.”  – Muriel Sp...

'Be brave enough to speak the truth'

 

“Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.  You must then live it to its fullest.” – Muriel Spark

 

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on Feb. 1, 1918, Spark applied that philosophy to an award-winning career as a novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist.  Her writing (and editing) career grew out of her work as a British Intelligence Officer during World War II when she realized she had a knack for the clever use of words.   

 

Starting as an editor of Poetry Review magazine, she soon was writing poems of her own, authoring several critically acclaimed poetry collections and books of criticism before turning to short stories and then novels in the late 1950s.  Her first effort, The Comforters, – built around the clever plot of a young woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel – firmly established her credentials as a major writer.

 

Perhaps best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – also adapted into both a play and a movie – she went on to write 22 novels and 21 books of poetry and nonfiction.  Her thriller The Mandelbaum Gate also was a multiple award winner.  Shortly before her death in 2006, she was named for the Golden PEN Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and ranked 8^th by The London Times among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.”   

“To be a successful writer,” Spark said, “one must be brave enough to speak the truth, even when it is uncomfortable or unpopular.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The only one listening'

A Writer's Moment: 'The only one listening':   “There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul'...

'The only one listening'

 

“There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estés

 

Born in Gary, Indiana on Jan. 27, 1945, Estés’ 6 books – led by the longtime bestselling Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype – and some two dozen audio works have been released in 37 languages.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Estés’,

 

                              Rainmaker: you could be the water

By the scent of water alone,
the withered vine comes back to life,
and thus…wherever the land is dry and hard,
you could be the water;
or you could be the iron blade
disking the earth open;
or you could be the acequia,
the mother ditch, carrying the water
from the river to the fields
to grow the flowers for the farmers;
or you could be the honest engineer
mapping the dams that must be taken down,
and those dams which could remain to serve
the venerable all, instead of only the very few.
You could be the battered vessel
for carrying the water by hand;
or you could be the one
who stores the water.
You could be the one who
protects the water,
or the one who blesses it,
or the one who pours it.
Or you could be the tired ground
that receives it;
or you could be the scorched seed
that drinks it;
or you could be the vine,
green-growing overland,
in all your wild audacity…

A Writer's Moment: 'Our carriers of civilization'

A Writer's Moment: 'Our carriers of civilization':   “Books are humanity in print.  Books are carriers of civilization.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, t...

'Our carriers of civilization'

 

“Books are humanity in print.  Books are carriers of civilization.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” – Barbara Tuchman 

Born in New York City on Jan. 30, 1912, Tuchman was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, led by her 1962 best-selling award winner The Guns of August (a prelude to and first month of World War I), and her 1970 biography on World War II General Joseph Stilwell.   In 1978, she wrote the amazing A Distant Mirror about the calamitous 14^th Century but considered reflective of the 20^th, especially on the horrors of war.  That book, too, was a finalist for the Pulitzer.

 

Tuchman began her career as a journalist and in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, became one of the few women – along with Martha Gelhorn – working as a war correspondent for The Nation.   Tuchman authored 11 best-selling historical books, many of which remain widely read and cited in both academic and popular history, maintaining her legacy and influence on historical scholarship.

 

“I want the reader to turn the page,” she said of her popular writing style, “and keep on turning until the end.”

A Writer's Moment: '(It's) the tool of our tradition'

A Writer's Moment: '(It's) the tool of our tradition':   "Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen.  We have to give what we write a sense...

'(It's) the tool of our tradition'

 

"Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen.  We have to give what we write a sense of reality.  The tool of our tradition is language." - Alice McDermott

 

Born in New York City in 1953, McDermott is the author of 9 novels including Charming Billy, winner of both the American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.  Her novel Someone was a National Book Award finalist, and three of her other books were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.  Her most recent novel, Absolution, won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award in 2024, the same year she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and honored with the Eugene O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award.   

 

McDermott, who now resides just outside Washington, DC, has been a writer-in-residence at several colleges and universities and was a longtime Professor at Johns Hopkins University.  She also was on the faculty of the renowned Sewanee Writers Conference for 20 years.  Her dozens of short stories and essays have been published in journals, magazines and newspapers across the country, and she is the author of the essay collection, What About the Baby?   

 

“I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything,” she said.  “I've always believed that you go to literature to find the shared human experience."

A Writer's Moment: 'The tools to write'

A Writer's Moment: 'The tools to write':   “We all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.”  – Ken Hil...

'The tools to write'

 

“We all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.” – Ken Hill

 

Born in England on this date in 1937, Hill was an acclaimed theater producer and director, primarily on the stages at Theatre Royal Stratford East and London’s West End.  Among his many hits were The Invisible Man and the original stage version of The Phantom of the Opera, which inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber to create his own musical blockbuster.

 

Hill’s stock-in-trade was musical adventure stories, including Zorro, The Musical.  Hill died of cancer at age 57 and part of his lasting legacy was the establishment of a memorial trust to help nurture new writing talent for theater.  The trust also gives the annual “Ken Hill Awards” for Best New Musical and to support new playwrights with writing and producing their work.

 

An investigative journalist before he started writing for theater, Hill also was a gifted composer and said that composers, like authors, have a lot in common with the people for whom they are writing.  

“The prime goal of an author," Hill said, "is the same as a musician, which is to emotionally connect with the reader in some way or another.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Expressing the inexpressible'

A Writer's Moment: 'Expressing the inexpressible':   “Our job as writers, as far as I can tell, is to attempt to express what seems inexpressible.”  – Nick Flynn   Born in Scituate, Massa...

'Expressing the inexpressible'

 

“Our job as writers, as far as I can tell, is to attempt to express what seems inexpressible.” – Nick Flynn

 

Born in Scituate, Massachusetts on this date in 1960, Flynn is best known for a trilogy of memoirs about his relationships, especially with his parents, and for his 6 collections of poetry.   He also is the subject of a hit movie Being Flynn, based on his memoirs.

While living in New York City with his wife and daughter, Flynn also spends considerable time in Houston, TX, where he is in residence at the University of Houston each Spring teaching poetry and interdisciplinary/collaborative art workshops.   His poems, essays, and non-fiction have been featured in The New Yorker, Paris Review, on National Public Radio’s This American Life, and The New York Times Book Review and have been translated into 14 languages.  His most recent poetry collection is Low.

 

“Events in our life, they define who we are,” Flynn said.  “It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.”

                       

A Writer's Moment: Few words, major impact

A Writer's Moment: Few words, major impact:   “You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about.” – William Stafford Born in Hutchinson, Kansas on J...

Few words, major impact

 

“You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about.” – William Stafford

Born in Hutchinson, Kansas on Jan. 17, 1914, Stafford taught poetry and writing for more than 30 years before his first major poetry collection - the National Book Award-winning Traveling Through the  - was published.  Over the next 30 years, until his death in 1993, Stafford published 60 more volumes of poetry and prose. Often compared to Robert Frost, Stafford won numerous honors and awards and served as Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Stafford’s,

 

                                                            Just Thinking

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile.  Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.

A Writer's Moment: Words at the heart of award-winning writing

A Writer's Moment: Words at the heart of award-winning writing:   “One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work.”  – Gloria Naylor   Born in...

Words at the heart of award-winning writing

 

“One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work.” – Gloria Naylor

 

Born in New York City on Jan. 25, 1950 Naylor was a professor and novelist best known for The Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day.  She died from a heart attack in 2016.

 

 The daughter of sharecroppers from Mississippi who moved to New York to seek a better life, she grew up in Harlem and became the first member of her family to graduate from high school and attend college.  Even though Naylor's mother had little education, she loved to read and encouraged her daughter to both read and keep a journal.   Naylor started writing as a teenager, filling countless notebooks with her stories, poems and observations that formed the basis for her later writing.   

 

While still a student at Brooklyn College and influenced by other popular black writers like Toni Morrison, she began writing stories centered on the lives of the black women she knew or had grown up around.  The first of her 8 novels was The Women of Brewster Place, winner of the 1983 National Book Award for Best First Novel.

 

 “Not only is your story worth telling,” Naylor said, “but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The first word, and last'

A Writer's Moment: 'The first word, and last':   “Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.”  – Ralph Keyes   Born in ...

'The first word, and last'

 

“Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.” – Ralph Keyes

 

Born in Ohio in January of 1945, Keyes is a lecturer and author of 16 books including Is There Life After High School?, adapted into a Broadway and nationally touring musical. And his book The Courage to Write has become a standard for aspiring writers.

 

 A graduate of Ohio’s Antioch College, where he studied journalism, Keyes is a frequent contributor to magazines ranging from GQ to Good Housekeeping to The Harvard Business Review.  He’s also been a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s “On The Media” and “All Things Considered.”  

 

 “I’m often asked why I write so often about ‘negative’ subjects: tensions between fathers and sons, adolescent angst, time pressure. My answer is that exploring such topics on paper helps me get rid of them,” Keyes said.  “Writing can be wonderful therapy, and cheap at the price. At the very least, you eventually get bored by thinking about anxious topics and want to move on”

A Writer's Moment: 'To find out things'

A Writer's Moment: 'To find out things':   “I write books to find out about things.”  – Rebecca West    Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield in London on this date in 1892, Fairfield tu...

'To find out things'

 

“I write books to find out about things.” – Rebecca West 

 

Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield in London on this date in 1892, Fairfield turned herself into the world-renowned author and reporter Rebecca West – a name she adopted from a “stage” name used while studying to become an actress in her late teens.  By the time of her death in 1983 she had published hundreds if not thousands of stimulating works in a wide range of genres, becoming a leading spokesperson on feminist issues and social justice.   

 

Her first novel – The Return of the Soldier – came out at age 26.  The bestselling tale of a shell-shocked, amnesiastic soldier returning from World War I instantly established her non-journalistic writing credentials.  Her last, The Birds Fall Down, a spy thriller set in pre-revolution Russia, cemented those credentials in writing history.  She ultimately produced 15 novels and 15 nonfiction books and also was feted as a leading reviewer and travel writer for many of the world’s top newspapers and magazines.

 

Among her other bestsellers were Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder – based on her magazine coverage of the Nuremberg trials; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund.   And she championed other writers, particularly those who were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

 

“God forbid that any book should be banned,” she wrote.  “The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”

A Writer's Moment: 'So focused that nothing will stop me'

A Writer's Moment: 'So focused that nothing will stop me':   “I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.”  – Joseph Wambaugh   Born in Pittsbu...

'So focused that nothing will stop me'

 

“I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.” – Joseph Wambaugh

 

Born in Pittsburgh, PA in January of 1937, Wambaugh is often listed among the greatest crime writers – for both nonfiction AND fiction.  The son of a police officer, he joined the U.S. Marines at age 17, served several years in the Corps, then followed his dad into police work, starting with the Los Angeles Police Department. 

 

In 1971, his first book, The New Centurions, was a critical and financial success, but he continued working as a police officer while writing, winning even more awards and success with his second book, The Blue Knight.   “(But) When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice,” Wambaugh said.  “The Onion Field made me a real writer. And . . . I couldn't be a cop anymore.”    

 
Many of his novels feature Los Angeles police officers as protagonists, but his nonfiction books like The Blooding and Fire Lover: A True Story are set in other parts of the country and England   Wambaugh (who died in 2025) was the winner of 3 Edgar Awards and recipient of Grand Master status from the Mystery Writers of America.  All 21 of his books – the last one being Harbor Nocturne in 2012 – were bestsellers and award winners. 

Wambaugh said he was always “very focused” when writing, striving for at least a thousand words a day. “Nothing will stop me,” he said.  “I mean nothing, until the book is finished.  I'm disciplined in spite of myself.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The door to every dream I've ever had'

A Writer's Moment: 'The door to every dream I've ever had':   “Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head wo...

'The door to every dream I've ever had'

 

“Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out.” – Dolly Parton

 

Born in Locust Ridge, TN on this date in 1946, Parton started singing professionally at age 10 and by the time she finished high school was writing the first of hundreds and hundreds of songs about life, love and society.  She’s been elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is a Kennedy Center Honoree for her lifetime achievements, which also include many movies, television shows, and founding the Dollywood Theme Park

 

“My songs are the door to every dream I've ever had and every success I've ever achieved.” 

 

 Parton also has authored many best-selling children's books, including the poignant Coat of Many Colors (due for a special “Anniversary Edition” this May); and a series called “Dolly Parton’s Billy the Kid.”  The latest in that series, Dolly Parton's Billy The Kid Dances His Heart Out, was released in December.   And she founded “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library,” annually distributing more than 10 million free books to 850 thousand children in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia.   

 

“Everywhere I go, kids call me 'the book lady.' The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the 'book lady' title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I've done something good with my life and with my success.”   

A Writer's Moment: 'The Simple Truth'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Simple Truth':   “There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory .” – Philip Levine   Born De...

'The Simple Truth'

 

“There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.” – Philip Levine

 

Born Detroit in January of 1928, Levine was best known for his poems about the working-class folks in his hometown.   He taught for 30 years at California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at several other schools before serving 6 years on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.  In 2011-12, shortly before his death, he served as the United States Poet Laureate.    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Levine’s,

 

                                                The Simple Truth

 

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

A Writer's Moment: '(It's) a hard act to bring off'

A Writer's Moment: '(It's) a hard act to bring off':   “Once the world has been created, the fantasy author still has to bring the story's characters to life and unfold a gripping plot. Tha...

'(It's) a hard act to bring off'

 

“Once the world has been created, the fantasy author still has to bring the story's characters to life and unfold a gripping plot. That's why good fantasy is such a hard act to bring off.” – Tony Bradman

 

Born in a suburb of London in January of 1954, Bradman gravitated to reading fantasies while still in primary school; started writing when he was in college (at Queens’ College, Cambridge where he earned his Master of Arts degree); and became a fulltime writer of children’s lit. and fantasy books in the 1980s.  Today, he is the author of more than 50 books for children, led by his wildly popular Dilly the Dinosaur series (which has sold over 2 million copies worldwide), and of numerous fantasy books and books of poetry.  He also is a popular speaker on writing and reads to school groups on a regular basis.

 

Bradman, who was elected to the Royal Society of Literature in 2024, said books like the Thomas the Tank Engine series and then The Hobbit got him hooked into reading and gave him the impetus to one day become a successful writer.

 

“I loved words and language, but the key thing for me then – as it is now – was story,” Bradman said.   “I love the feeling of being drawn into a story, the delicious sense of tension that comes from wanting to know what is going to happen next and almost being afraid to find out. That happens when you read the best stories – and as I found out, it can happen when you write a story of your own, too.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Escape yourself . . . (and) be willing to fail'

A Writer's Moment: 'Escape yourself . . . (and) be willing to fail':   “I'm always terrified when I'm writing.”  – Mary Karr   Born in Groves, Texas on Jan. 16, 1955 Karr brought her early years to...

'Escape yourself . . . (and) be willing to fail'

 

“I'm always terrified when I'm writing.” – Mary Karr

 

Born in Groves, Texas on Jan. 16, 1955 Karr brought her early years to life in the New York Times bestselling memoir, The Liars' Club, a book that delves into her deeply troubled childhood.  The book is the first of her three memoirs - the other two being Cherry and Lit: A Memoir - and the foundation for her nonfiction book The Art of Memoir.

 

Karr also has had success as a poet and essayist, winning the prestigious Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize for her writing.  A sought-after regular on the speakers’ circuit, she now resides in New York and is a writing professor at Syracuse University.  The most recent of her five poetry collections is Tropic of Squalor.

 

“Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself,” Karr said. 

 

 “The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The work of a generation'

A Writer's Moment: 'The work of a generation':   If there is a special ‘Hell’ for writers it would probably be the forced contemplation of their own works.”  – John Dos Passos   Born ...

'The work of a generation'

 

If there is a special ‘Hell’ for writers it would probably be the forced contemplation of their own works.” – John Dos Passos

 

Born in Chicago on this date in 1896, Dos Passos’ wrote one of the 20th Century's greatest Trilogies about issues of social justice even though he was a member of what today would be called “The 1%.”  

 

Well-educated (private schools and a university degree from Harvard) and well-traveled, he also studied in Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art and architecture, life experiences balanced by time served as an ambulance driver during World War I.  Both shaped his views and his writing about “fairness and justice.” 

 

Prolific author and gifted artist (he did covers for Life magazine, for example) his USA Trilogy – The 42^nd Parallel; 1919; and The Big Money – is rated in the top 25 of The100 Best English Language series of novels written in the 20^th Century.

 

Near the end of his long life – he died at age 84 in 1970 – Dos Passos reflected on his life’s work and said: “The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we, each of us, for better or worse, add our brick to the edifice.”

A Writer's Moment: The powerful impact of inspirational storytellers

A Writer's Moment: The powerful impact of inspirational storytellers: “If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.”  – Wa...

The powerful impact of inspirational storytellers

“If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.” – Walter Mosley

 

Born in Los Angeles on this date in 1952, Mosley is one of the world’s leading Crime Mystery novelists, especially noted for his best-selling “Easy Rawlins” series.  His hard-boiled black private investigator is featured in 17 books, including two of his most-recent – 2024’s Farewell, Amethystine  and 2025’s Gray Dawn.  Another of Mosley’s books is 2025’s Been Wrong So Long It Feels Right, the latest in his “King Oliver” crime mystery series.

 

Growing up as an only child, Mosley ascribed his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies."  It was after moving to New York City and taking a course in writing at the City College of Harlem – inspired by Alice Walker’s classic novel The Color Purple – that he caught the writing bug. 

 

He started writing at age 34 and said he has written every day since.   His nearly 60 works span everything from mysteries, science fiction and crime fiction to graphic novels and non-fiction politics, translated into 21 languages.  Among his numerous writing awards are the British Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  He’s also written or adapted 9 screenplays, including an episode of this past year’s TV hit series The Lowdown and the movie Devil in a Blue Dress, based on his very first novel.

 

Mosley cites many “inspirational storytellers” as role models, but the most important one, he said, was his father.

  

“My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The same degree of consciousness'

A Writer's Moment: 'The same degree of consciousness':   “Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.”...

'The same degree of consciousness'

 

“Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.” – Laura Riding

 

A champion of free verse, Riding was born in New York City on Jan. 16, 1901.  Also a critic, essayist, novelist and short story writer, she wrote the first of her many hundreds of poems in the mid-1920s with her first poetry collection, The Close Chaplet, published in 1926.  One of the most popular poets in her lifetime (she died in 1991), her works were published in a dozen languages and remain among the most studied and reviewed.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Riding’s,

 

                                                            Yes and No

 

Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet—
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas—

Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.

Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?

Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.

 

A Writer's Moment: That 'reading, thinking, creating' process

A Writer's Moment: That 'reading, thinking, creating' process:   “I like to do the research of history and the creativity of writing fiction. I am creating this thing which I think is twice as difficult ...

That 'reading, thinking, creating' process

 

“I like to do the research of history and the creativity of writing fiction. I am creating this thing which I think is twice as difficult as writing either history or fiction.” – Philippa Gregory
 

Born in Kenya on this date in 1954, Gregory is best known for her award-winning novels (and cinematic pieces) The Other Boleyn Girl and The White Queen.   After “mostly” growing up in England, she studied (and earned degrees) in 18^th century literature.  But her primary writing focus has been on the 16^th century and the Tudors.  The prolific Gregory has penned 51 novels, half-a-dozen children’s books, 3 nonfiction books, 9 adaptations for stage and screen, and many short stories, essays and reviews.  Her latest novel, published in 2025, is Boleyn Traitor.

 

Gregory said she sometimes feels that her genre choice isn't highly regarded, but she likes writing it and has drawn a devoted following.  She also is a regular on the BBC where she actually started her writing career as a journalist.  But it is in historical fiction in which she has immersed herself.

 

“I love reading and I love thinking,” she said.  “The reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Fill it with lightning'

A Writer's Moment: 'Fill your book 

with lightning': “Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning.”...

'Fill your book with lightning'

“Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning.” – Robert Littell

 

Born in New York on this date in 1935, Littell’s writings focus on exploits by the CIA, and he coyly refuses to answer the question of whether or not he's ever worked for that agency. Meanwhile, despite turning 91 today, his writing on the topic is still going strong.  His 23^rd book, Bronshthein in the Bronx, was released in 2025 and word is he’s got number 26 on the front burner.

                                            

Littel grew up in Brooklyn, spent 4 years in the U.S. Navy, and then moved into journalism, working for many years as foreign correspondent for Newsweek magazine.   He branched into creative writing in the early 1970s and has gone on to become one of the leading “spy novelists.”  His first effort, 1973’s The Defection of A.J. Lewinter, won several major writing awards and he’s never looked back from that shift in his career.

 

Perhaps his best-known novel is the widely acclaimed The Company, not only a New York Times’ bestseller but also a television mini-series starring Michael Keaton.  His book Legends also was made into a TV series, and this past summer he wrote the screenplay for a new hit film on Hulu, The Amatuer, also based on one of his books.

 

Writing runs in the family.  His son Jonathan, older brother Alan, and brother-in-law – the French writer Bernard du Boucheron – also are authors. 

 

“Fill your pages with details,” Littell advises. “Work hard to get the right word.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's all about their brute persistence'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's all about their brute persistence':   “The great thing about novels is that you can be as un-shy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk abou...

'It's all about their brute persistence'

 

“The great thing about novels is that you can be as un-shy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.” – Nicholson Baker

 

Born in New York on this date in 1957, Baker is a novelist and essayist who has written about everything from poetry, literature and library systems to history, politics and time manipulation.   Among his many writing honors are a National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International Hermann Hesse Prize.  While he has written 11 well-received novels, Baker’s best-known works are the non-fiction titles Double-Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, and Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II; The End of Civilization.  His most recent book, his 8th non-fiction title, is 2024’s Finding A Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art.

 

A fervent advocate for libraries’ maintaining “physical copies” of books, manuscripts and old newspapers, he established the American Newspaper Repository to help insure that they would not be destroyed and winning the prestigious James Madison Freedom of Information Award for his efforts.  

 

“Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out,” he said.  “They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades.  That’s one of their nicest qualities – their brute persistence.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The opening and closing of a door'

A Writer's Moment: 'The opening and closing of a door':   “Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.”  – Carl Sandb...

'The opening and closing of a door'

 

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.” – Carl Sandburg

 

Born in Galesburg, IL on this date in 1878, Sandburg said he never set out to win any prizes for his writing and, in fact, wanted to “write my own way,” even though that often was at odds with what his contemporaries were doing.  All that did, of course, was win him most of the major prizes, including three Pulitzers – the only poet to ever win that many.

 

He actually won two for poetry and one for his literature, the first in 1919 for Corn Huskers, then the second in 1940 for the second volume of his two-volume masterpiece Abraham Lincoln, still considered one of the definitive biographical works on our 16^th President.  In 1951 he won a third Pulitzer for his Complete Poems. 

 

Like so many great writers of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, Sandburg began his writing career as a journalist (for the Chicago Daily News).    And, while he is most known for his poetry, particularly about his adopted city, his historical work, biographies, novels, children's literature, and film reviews also were among the best pieces of his day. And, in his “spare” time, Sandburg collected and edited books of ballads and folklore.

At his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed, “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The true interpreters of the mind . . . and heart'

A Writer's Moment: 'The true interpreters of the mind . . . and heart':   “Writers, not psychiatrists, are the true interpreters of the human mind and heart, and we have been at it for a very long time.” – Floren...

'The true interpreters of the mind . . . and heart'

 

“Writers, not psychiatrists, are the true interpreters of the human mind and heart, and we have been at it for a very long time.” – Florence King

 

Born in Washington, D.C. on this date in 1936, King was a longtime National Review essayist and columnist, where her column “The Misanthrope’s Corner” not only served up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques but also earned her the title “The Queen of Mean.”  She wrote the column right up to her death (just one day after her 80^th birthday) in 2016.

 

King started her journalism career for The Raleigh News and Observer, where she won the North Carolina Press Woman Award for Reporting.  That led to the job offer and nearly lifelong tenure at The National Review.  She also wrote a couple of romance novels and penned Southern Ladies and Gentlemen, a humorous "Guide to the South for Yankees.”  Her most popular book is Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, a semi-autobiographical work focused on, among other things, her grandmother's, mother's, and father's construct of what it meant to “be a lady.”   

 

 “Write clearly, succinctly and with purpose," she advised.  "Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.”

A Writer's Moment: Avoiding average, creating masterpieces

A Writer's Moment: Avoiding average, creating masterpieces: “If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's just going to be average.” – Derek Walcott   Born in ...

Avoiding average, creating masterpieces

“If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's just going to be average.” – Derek Walcott

 

Born in Saint Lucian-Trinidad in January of 1930, Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature, an Obie Award for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain; a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award; a Royal Society of Literature Award; the Queen's Medal for Poetry; and the T. S. Eliot Prize for his remarkable book of poetry White Egrets.  Walcott died in 2017.

 

 For powerful and poignant reads, check out his “A City’s Death by Fire” or “A Far Cry From Africa.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is,

                                             Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the universal language'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the universal language':   “Language is an inadequate form of communication. If you've ever picked up an instrument, it's because you don't feel you are ...

'It's the universal language'

 

“Language is an inadequate form of communication. If you've ever picked up an instrument, it's because you don't feel you are communicating sufficiently.” – Stephen Stills

 

Best known as part of two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame groups – Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Stills was born on Jan. 3, 1945, a literal “rolling stone.”  The son of military parents, he traveled the world in his growing up years and didn’t quite know where to call home as he and his family moved from place to place.

 

Those experiences combined with his amazing musical talent led him into professional performance before he was out of his teen years and ultimately into the Hall of Fame.  Both his musicianship (he performed on multiple instruments) and his writing (most of the songs of the two groups noted above plus a longstanding solo list) made him an American musical icon.

 

Ranked as Rolling Stone magazine’s 28^th All Time Greatest guitarist, Stills’ writing compliments his wide range of lyrics addressing everything from the American scene to politics to love.  His “Love The One You’re With” is ranked one of the 100 all-time greatest rock songs.   

 

He also has written many songs for and about other singers, including Judy Collins with whom he had a longstanding on-again, off-again relationship, fostering the award-winning album “Suite:  Judy Blue Eyes.”   His soft rock ballad “Teach Your Children” is also listed among many “greatest hits” lists.

 

“Mostly retired,” he still does occasional guest appearances, especially to support causes that help those in need.  “Music,” said Stills, “is the universal language of mankind.”