A Writer's Moment
A look at writing and writers who inspire us.
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“Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and w...
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“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, ...
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A Writer's Moment: 'Property of the imagination' : “The English language is nobody's special property. ...
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A Writer's Moment: 'Information In; Creative Responses Out' : “One of the great joys of life is creativity....
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A Writer's Moment: 'Story ideas surround you' : “I always tell my students, 'If you walk around with your eyes and ears...
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
A Writer's Moment: 'Fighting through life's travails'
'Fighting through life's travails'
“To
throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in
life.” – Edwin Markham
Born in Oregon on this date in 1852, Markham grew up in a broken home, worked
the family farm as a child, was mostly self-educated, and against the wishes of
his family (he was youngest of 10 children) decided to go to college and study
literature.
After
earning degrees in The Classics and teaching literature for several years, Markham
fell in love with poetry and began writing full time in his late
40s, the start of a 40-year career. His two most famous poems are "The Man with the Hoe,"
inspired by the painting by the artist Jean-Francois Millet, and "Lincoln,
the Man of the People," read at the dedication of the Lincoln
Memorial. The author of 7 poetry collections, he was named Poet Laureate
of Oregon in the 1930s when he also published his highly regarded Eighty
Poems at Eighty.
Shortly
before his death in 1940, he was named as the first recipient of the American
Academy of Poets Award for his “contributions to American literature and impact
on the poetic landscape.”
A
prolific letter writer and book collector, Markham amassed more than 15,000
books. He bequeathed them and his personal papers and letters,
including years of correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce,
and fellow poets Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell, to tiny Wagner College in New
York City.
“Great
it is to believe in the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream,"
he wrote, "but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the
end, the dream is true!”
Monday, April 20, 2026
A Writer's Moment: 'Having a genuine adventure'
'Having a genuine adventure'
“I
have two parents who are brilliant storytellers. The art of developing a story
and nurturing a story was present in my household from the day I was born.” –
Robert Kurson
Born
on April 18, 1963 Kurson wrote Shadow Divers, the blockbuster
bestselling true story of two Americans who discover a World War II German
U-boat sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Shadow Divers spent
24 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and was awarded
an American Booksellers Association’s "Book of the Year Award."
A
one-time lawyer with a degree from Harvard Law School, Kurson said he always
thought writing would be his real profession and first decided to give it a try at
the Chicago Sun-Times, where he wrote both sports stories and
features.
A
self-proclaimed “adventure seeker,” Kurson also wrote Pirate Hunters:
Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship, a gripping
account of the search for the wreck of the 17th-century pirate ship Golden
Fleece.
“I
think that pirates represent every person's ability to get up and leave their
current daily situation and go on an adventure, and maybe to see things and do
things they've never done before or even dreamed of doing," Kurson said.
“It's never too late in life to have a genuine adventure.”
Saturday, April 18, 2026
A Writer's Moment: 'How you fortify your inner life'
'How you fortify your inner life'
‘If
poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your
inwardness.’ – Seamus Heaney
Born
in Northern Ireland on April 13, 1939 Heaney is widely recognized as one of the
major poets of the 20th Century. He authored
more than two-dozen volumes of poetry and criticism, 2 plays and numerous
translations and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.
A 12-volume collection of his poems titled The Poems of Seamus Heaney, encompassing all the poems Heaney published in his lifetime as well as some that appeared after his death in 2013 – was released in 2025. For Saturday’s Poem, here is Heaney’s,
Follower
My
father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.