Apm: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac

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Each day, The Writer's Almanac features Garrison Keillor recounting the highlights of this day in history and reads a short poem or two. The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media. (Author: American Public Media)
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Recent episodes from Apm: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac

  • Published: Jul 31, 08
    Thursday's Poem: "Eating Together" by Kim Addonizio from What Is This Thing Called Love. Thursday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of children's fantasy writer J.K. Rowling, born Joanne Rowling in Yate, England, in 1965. She has written seven novels in the Harry Potter series, a series that has sold nearly 400 million copies. Rowling grew up in rural England. She says that the character of Hermione in her series is "a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud
     
  • Published: Jul 24, 08
    Thursday's Poem: "The Good Nights" by Joseph Mills from Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers: Wine Poems. Thursday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of Robert Graves, born in Wimbledon, England (1895). He fought in World War I. Graves spent much of the war in the trenches, amid mud, mustard gas, and corpses. In one battle he was wounded badly and the London Newspapers reported that he was dead. Someone showed him a copy of his own obituary, and Graves decided that he had been spared from death
     
  • Published: Jul 22, 08
    Tuesday's Poem: "It Is Marvellous to Wake Up Together" by Elizabeth Bishop from Poems, Prose, and Letters. Tuesday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of poet Stephen Vincent Benét, born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1898). He was of the most popular poets of his day, and today he's remembered for his epic poem about the Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928). It's the birthday of novelist Tom Robbins, born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina (1936). He's known for novels such as Even Cowg
     
  • Published: Jul 19, 08
    Saturday's Poem: "Up against the Sea" by David Wagoner from A Map of the Night. Saturday's Literary Notes: On this date in 1799, French soldiers found the famous Rosetta Stone. They were tearing down a wall in the town of Rosetta, thirty miles north of Alexandria in Egypt, and found the famous tablet inscribed with a proclamation honoring Ptolemy V, carved in three alphabetic systems: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. It served as the key to decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics, which had puzzled
     
  • Published: Jul 16, 08
    Wednesday's Poem: “Sing we and chant it…” by Anonymous. Wednesdsay's Literary Notes: In 1945 on this day, the first atomic bomb exploded at 5:30 a.m., 120 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. People saw a ball of fire that rose rapidly, releasing four times the heat of the interior of the sun, followed by a 40,000 foot mushroom cloud. The bomb was supposed to give the United States "peace through strength." Officials told the New Mexican citizens that an ammunitions dump
     
  • Published: Jul 12, 08
    Saturday's Poem: “Back to Back” by Debra Kang Dean from News of Home: Poems Saturday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts (1817). He's the author of Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) and the essay "Civil Disobedience" (1849). He went off to Harvard when he was just 16. He was 27 when he built a small cabin on the edge of Walden Pond, a small lake near Concord, and wrote about his time there. Thoreau said,
     
  • Published: Jul 11, 08
    Friday's Poem: : “Opposing Forces” by Eamon Grennan from Matter of Fact. Friday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of the literary critic and teacher Harold Bloom, born in New York City (1930) to Jewish immigrants. His first language was Yiddish, and he started reading poetry in English before he'd ever heard English spoken. He didn't do well in high school but took the statewide Regents exams, got the highest score in the state, and that won him a scholarship to Cornell. He wen
     
  • Published: Jul 8, 08
    Tuesday's Poem: "Old Timers' Day" by Donald Hall from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Tuesday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of the novelist and short-story writer J.F. (James Farl) Powers, born in Jacksonville, Illinois (1917). He was a writer who didn't have too many readers in his lifetime. He wrote primarily about the lives of Catholic priests. But after his death in 1999, many critics ranked him among the greatest — and funniest — fiction writers of the late 20th
     
  • Published: Jul 7, 08
    Monday's Poem: "The Exchange" by Ron Rash from Among the Believers. Monday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of Robert Heinlein, born in Butler, Missouri (1907). He wrote more than 50 novels and many collections of short stories. Heinlein is best known for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, about a boy born during the first manned mission to Mars...
     
  • Published: Jul 7, 08
    Monday's Poem: "The Exchange" by Ron Rash from Among the Believers. Monday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of Robert Heinlein, born in Butler, Missouri (1907). He wrote more than 50 novels and many collections of short stories. Heinlein is best known for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, about a boy born during the first manned mission to Mars...
     
  • Published: Jul 3, 08
    The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, July 3, 2008
     
  • Published: Jul 2, 08
    The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, July 2, 2008
     
  • Published: Jun 27, 08
    The Writer's Almanac for Friday, June 27, 2008
     
  • Published: Jun 18, 08
    The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, June 18, 2008
     
  • Published: Jun 17, 08
    The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, June 17, 2008