Literary News
DECEMBER
December 9: 25th anniversary of the death of Toni Cade Bambara.
December 10: Centenary of Clarice Lispector’s birth.
December 18: 150th anniversary of the birth of Saki.
December 22: 75 years since Holden Caulfield’s first appearance (in “I’m Crazy,” a short story published in Collier’s).
JANUARY
1st January 1868 - Sophia Alice Callahan's Birthday, author of 
Wynema, A Child of the Forest (1891)
First Published Native American female novelist,
“There is no man who is enterprising and keeps well up with the times but confesses that the women of to-day are in every respect, except political liberty, equal to the men.”
1st January 1919 - J. D. Salinger's birthday, author of Catcher in the Rye
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Catcher in the Rye
14th January 1898 - Lewis Carroll's birthday, author of Alice in Wonderland
27th January 1832 - Lewis Carroll's un-birthday
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'
19th January 1809 - Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, author of The Tell Tale Heart
““I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” —a letter to George W. Evelthra
20th January 1993 Maya Angelou reads, On the Pulse of Morning. With her public recitation, Angelou became the second poet in history to read a poem at a presidential inauguration, and the first African American and woman.
28th January 1813 - Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen was published
“Angry people are not always wise.”
FEBRUARY
February 1818 - Frederick Douglass is born, author of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
2nd February 1882 - James Joyce's birthday, author of Ulysses
"He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music."
12th February 1938 - Judy Blume's Birthday, author of Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret
“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.”
18th February 1937 - Toni Morrison's Birthday, author of The Bluest Eye
"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was."
23rd February 1868 - W.E.B. DuBois Birthday, author of The Souls of Black Folk
“We say easily, for instance, ‘The ignorant ought not to vote.’ We would say, ‘No civilized state should have
citizens too ignorant to participate in government,’ and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no
state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it.”