Notes For November 28th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 28th, 1944, the famous American writer and activist Rita Mae Brown was born. She was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Florida. Her biological mother, an unwed 18-year-old girl, turned her over to an orphanage.

At three months old, Rita was adopted by her new parents, Ralph and Julia Ellen Brown. An intellectually gifted child, she had learned to read when she was three years old. As a high school student, she excelled at both academics and sports.

During Rita's teen years, she lost her adoptive father and began to experiment with sex, taking both male and female lovers. She considered herself a bisexual who preferred women, saying, "I don't believe in straight or gay. I really don't. I think we're all degrees of bisexual."

When she was 16, the father of Rita's high school girlfriend found her love letters and outed her. As a result, she was kicked out of the student council. It was the first and not the last incident of homophobic persecution she experienced.

By 1964, Rita had won a scholarship to the University of Florida. When she wasn't studying, she worked for the civil rights movement. Her scholarship was revoked and she was expelled from university, allegedly because of her civil rights work, but that was just the school's excuse.

The real reason for Rita's expulsion and the loss of her scholarship was that she had been outed as a lesbian by the officers of her sorority. They suspected that Rita was gay and confronted her. She told them that if she was in love with someone, that person's gender didn't matter.

After losing her scholarship, a penniless Rita hitchhiked to New York City. Homeless at first, she lived in a car with a male friend and a cat she'd named Baby Jesus. Determined to make something of herself, she put herself through New York University.

Upon graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English and the classics, she continued her education, studying cinematography at the New York School of Visual Arts. She would ultimately receive a Ph.D at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.

In 1970, while studying at the New York School of Visual Arts, Rita worked for the National Organization for Women (NOW). She would resign in protest over NOW president Betty Friedan's homophobic remarks and attempts to distance NOW from lesbian organizations.

Rita famously quipped that lesbian was "the one word that can cause the [National Organization of Women's] Executive Committee [to have] a collective heart attack."

After leaving NOW, Rita Mae Brown co-founded The Furies Collective, a lesbian feminist newspaper collective. She began her literary career with two poetry collections, The Hand That Cradles the Rock (1971) and Songs to a Handsome Woman (1973).

Also in 1973, Rita's classic first novel was published. One of the most controversial young adult novels ever written, it was rejected by every major publisher in New York. She tried to get an agent, but that didn't work, either.

One agent, a woman, literally threw Rita's manuscript at her, called her a pervert, and told her to get out of her office. She finally found a publisher, a new and small feminist publishing house called Daughters Press, who bought her novel for $1,000.

Rubyfruit Jungle is a picaresque, semi-autobiographical novel about a girl's coming-of-age as a lesbian, a tale told with humor, pathos, and zest. It paints a frank and honest portrait of lesbians that shatters all the stereotypes.

Molly Bolt is a pretty young girl who has a tempestuous relationship with her mother, Carrie, who informs her that she's an adopted bastard child. Beginning at the age of eleven, Molly experiments sexually with both girls and boys, including her cousin Leroy.

As a teenager, Molly loses her adoptive father Carl, to whom she was close, and has an affair with a cheerleader, Carolyn, who rejects the lesbian label, seeing herself as bisexual.

Determined to make something of herself, Molly becomes an excellent student and wins a college scholarship. When her lesbian affair with her alcoholic roommate is discovered, Molly loses her scholarship and is expelled from university.

Broke but not broken, the feisty Molly heads for New York City to study filmmaking and finds that life in the concrete jungle isn't all she dreamed it would be. Using her beauty, charm, intelligence, and sparkling wit, she determines to become the greatest filmmaker of all time.

Since Daughters Press, the publisher of Rubyfruit Jungle, was so small, there was no marketing or reviews of the novel at the time it was published, nor was it available in any major bookstores.

The novel was mostly sold in small bookshops, by mail, and even out of the trunks of cars. Nevertheless, word of mouth made Rubyfruit Jungle an underground hit, selling 70,000 copies in its first four years.

When it gained a wide release, it received great reviews and copies soon appeared on high school library shelves, causing an uproar - a censorship row that would last for many years - due to its sexual content and language.

Rita Mae Brown would write more great novels, including In Her Day (1976), a lesbian comic romance set in early 1970s Greenwich Village. Carole is a conservative, middle aged art history professor whose life is turned upside down when she falls for Ilse, a 20-year-old feminist revolutionary.

Southern Discomfort (1982) is a demented Southern Gothic comedy set in Alabama, circa 1918. It told the story of Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre, a Southern belle trapped in a loveless marriage who falls madly in love with Hercules Jinks - a handsome black prizefighter!

Rita's talent for comedy can also be seen in her semi autobiographical Runnymede series, a blend of comedy and drama. In the first book, Six of One (1978), we meet the main characters. Nicole "Nickel" Smith, the narrator, is a bisexual writer in her 30s who has returned to her hometown of Runnymede, Maryland, which straddles the Mason-Dixon Line.

The other main characters are eccentric, headstrong, and elderly sisters Wheezie and Juts Hunsenmeir - Nickel's aunts - who are deeply devoted to each other, yet constantly at each other's throats. The narrative of their lives moves back and forth in time.

In 1990, Rita decided to try something different. She began a series of mystery novels allegedly co-written by Sneaky Pie Brown - her cat. The Mrs. Murphy Series features the adventures of Mrs. Murphy, a tiger cat, and her human companion, Mary "Harry" Haristeen, who live in the small town of Crozet, Virginia.

In the first novel, Wish You Were Here (1990), someone is brutally murdering Crozet's most prominent citizens. Each victim received a postcard before they were murdered; on one side is a picture of a tombstone, on the other is a message: "Wish you were here." Can Harry and Mrs. Murphy solve the murders?

So far, Rita Mae Brown has written nearly three dozen Mrs. Murphy Mysteries. Her latest, Feline Fatale, was published last year, in April.

Another of Rita's mystery series is the Sister Jane series, whose first book, Outfoxed, was published in 2000. It's set in a Blue Ridge Mountain town in Virginia with a strict code of social conduct, a tradition of English-style fox hunting, and an unusual sleuth.

The sleuth in question is Jane Arnold, known as Sister Jane - Master of the prestigious Jefferson Hunt Club. In a neat twist, the foxes, hounds, horses, and other animals speak to each other. They know what the humans are doing, but the humans can't understand them.

Rita has also written several screenplays for TV movies and feature films, including the famous horror movie The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). She wrote it as a spoof, but the director chose to shoot it as a serious slasher flick, resulting in a cult classic film.

While her parents are away, a high school girl hosts a slumber party for her friends, which is crashed by their boyfriends and an unexpected guest - an escaped mental patient wielding a portable electric drill. While the director meant for it to be taken seriously, it's clearly a parody of slasher films and their tropes.

The movie spawned two sequels, The Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) and The Slumber Party Massacre III (1990), which were neither written by Rita Mae Brown nor related to her original screenplay.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Writers will happen in the best of families."

- Rita Mae Brown

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 90-minute interview with Rita Mae Brown recorded before a live audience as part of the National Writers Series. Enjoy!

Notes For November 27th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 27th, 1909, the famous American writer and critic James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. When he was six years old, his father was killed in a car accident. A year later, he and his younger sister Emma were sent to the first of several boarding schools.

James' favorite boarding school was the Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys in Sewanee, Tennessee. At this school, run by Episcopal monks, Agee met Episcopal priest Father James Harold Flye, who would become a lifelong friend.

When he was sixteen, after spending the summer traveling through Europe with Father Flye, James Agee entered Phillips Exeter Academy prep school, where he became president of the Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly, where his first writings were published.

Although he barely passed most of his classes, Agee was admitted to Harvard after graduation, where he became editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate and delivered the class ode at commencement.

After graduating Harvard, Agee married his first wife, Via Saunders, and began writing for Fortune magazine. In 1934, his first and only poetry collection, Permit Me Voyage, was published, featuring a foreword by poet Archibald MacLeish.

While writing for Fortune, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment living with poor sharecroppers in Alabama, but left the magazine before completing his article.

He turned the material into a nonfiction book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). The book only sold 600 copies before it was remaindered. That year, Agee's second marriage broke up.

The next year, James Agee became the literary critic for Time magazine. At one point, he was reviewing up to six books a week. He left Time to become the film critic for the liberal news magazine The Nation.

By 1948, he had become a freelance writer. An assignment for Life magazine resulted in the publication of an acclaimed article about legendary silent film comedians Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon. The article is credited with reviving Keaton's career.

Many of Agee's freelance assignments were movie reviews or articles on films, most of which were later published as Agee On Film and Agee On Film II. He championed screen legend Charlie Chaplin's classic film, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a controversial black comedy that was ahead of its time.

A commercial failure that raised the ire of conservative audiences and the clergy, the movie starred Chaplin as Henri Verdoux, a Parisian bank teller who loses his job to the global depression. So, he comes up with a unique means of supporting his crippled wife and their little son.

Verdoux becomes a professional bluebeard, marrying rich women for their money, then murdering them. The funniest scene finds Chaplin in a rowboat, trying in vain to drown his latest wife, superbly played by comedienne Martha Raye.

When Verdoux is finally captured, tried, and convicted of numerous murders, he gives this memorable speech with a defiant, malicious smile:

As for being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it? Is it not building weapons of destruction for the sole purpose of mass killing? Has it not blown unsuspecting women and little children to pieces? And done it very scientifically? As a mass killer, I am an amateur by comparison. However, I do not wish to lose my temper, because very shortly, I shall lose my head. Nevertheless, upon leaving this spark of earthly existence, I have this to say: I shall see you ALL very soon. Very soon.

Just before his execution, a priest is sent to Verdoux's cell to counsel him. In a final act of defiant bravado, Verdoux tells the priest, "Who knows what sin is... who knows what mysterious destiny it serves? What would you be doing without sin?"

Monsieur Verdoux proved to be quite a shocker for postwar audiences and would be used against Charlie Chaplin a few years later by the infamous HUAC, (House Unamerican Activities Committee) which falsely accused Chaplin of being a communist. He was later banned from re-entering the United States.

In the 1950s, while continuing his work as a freelance writer, James Agee became a Hollywood screenwriter. Before his screenwriting career was derailed by his alcoholism, Agee would co-write the screenplays for two classic films, The African Queen (1951) and Night Of The Hunter (1955).

The African Queen, directed by John Huston, was an adaptation of C.S. Forester's classic novel about British missionary siblings (Robert Morely and Katharine Hepburn) in German East Africa during the outbreak of World War I.

Humphrey Bogart co-starred as Charlie Allnut, the grizzled Canadian boat captain who delivers their mail and supplies and later attempts to rescue Hepburn from the Germans after her brother dies.

Night Of The Hunter, a classic suspense thriller, was directed by Charles Laughton and based on a novel by Davis Grubb. Robert Mitchum starred as Reverend Harry Powell, a preacher and psychopathic killer with the words LOVE and HATE tattooed across his knuckles.

Powell tracks down the two small children of his former cellmate, hoping to find a fortune in stolen money, after which, he plans to kill them. The children find sanctuary with an elderly but tough woman (silent screen legend Lillian Gish) who sings hymns and packs a shotgun.

Despite Agee's success, the ravages of alcoholism and chain-smoking took their toll on his health. On May 16th, 1955, James Agee died of a heart attack (his third) while in a cab en route to a doctor's appointment. He was 45 years old.

In 1957, his first and only novel, an autobiographical novel titled A Death in the Family, was published posthumously. A year later, it won a Pulitzer Prize.

Four years later, the novel was adapted as a Broadway play by Tad Mosel. Titled All the Way Home, the play also won a Pulitzer Prize and was itself adapted as a feature film in 1963 and as a PBS TV movie in 2002.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary diction.' I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive."

- James Agee

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Cotton Tenants, a 30,000 word nonfiction work commissioned but never published by Fortune magazine on poor tenant farmers in the Deep South during the Great Depression. Written by James Agee in 1941 and thought long lost, it was rediscovered and published in 2013.

Notes For November 26th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 26th, 1864, the legendary English writer Lewis Carroll gave a copy of the completed manuscript of his classic novel, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, to Alice Liddell, the little girl whom he named the book's heroine after.

Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson IV, had been teaching mathematics at the University of Christ Church, Oxford, when he first met ten-year-old Alice Liddell. Her father, Henry Liddell, was the new Dean of the university.

Dodgson became a close friend of the Liddell family, and often took Alice and her siblings out for boat rides. Of all the Liddell children, Dodgson was closest to youngest daughter Alice.

A brilliant mathematician who also possessed an above average talent for wordplay, Dodgson would tell Alice fantastic stories. One day, while they were out alone on a rowing trip, Dodgson told Alice a story about a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in a strange, magical, and sometimes scary world.

Alice loved all of Dodgson's stories. The one about the little girl was her favorite. He told her that he was thinking of turning it into a book, and she begged him to do so. He promised her that he would. Originally, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was going to be a 15,500 word novella, but Dodgson expanded it to almost twice that length.

After he completed the manuscript in November of 1864, which included his own illustrations, he made a handwritten copy and gave it to Alice Liddell as an early Christmas present.

The homemade book featured the original title, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, and was inscribed, "A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child, in Memory of a Summer Day." The "summer day" was a reference to the rowing trip he and Alice had taken the previous summer.

The following year, in 1865, Dodgson's novel was published as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, under his now famous pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. a clever play on his own name; Carroll is an Irish surname similar to the Latin word Carolus, which the name Charles comes from.

The initial 2,000 copy press run of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was held back when illustrator John Tenniel complained about the print quality. A new edition was soon printed and released.

Though it came out the same year, in December of 1865, the publication date was given as 1866. It sold out fast, and Dodgson became an overnight sensation - though he would become more famous in England as photographer than as a writer.

It was this occupation that gained him entrance into high society. He would photograph many notable people, including legendary poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. When he retired as a photographer in 1880, he'd taken over 3,000 photographs, but less than 1,000 of them would survive.

Dodgson wrote several more children's books, including a poetry collection, but none would be as popular or enduring as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and its sequel, Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871).

Adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television, the Alice books continue to enchant new generations of fans - both children and adults - with their magic, humor, and wit.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Life, what is it but a dream?"

- Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson IV)

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Lewis Carroll's classic novel, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Enjoy!

Notes For November 25th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 25th, 1952, The Mousetrap, the classic play by the legendary English mystery writer Agatha Christie, opened in London at the Ambassadors Theatre.

The play, a murder mystery, was Christie's adaptation of her own short story, Three Blind Mice. It was first written as a radio play, performed on May 30th, 1947, in honor of the 80th birthday of England's Queen Mary. Then it was turned into a short story in 1950.

Agatha Christie had to change the title of her stage adaptation because there was another play running at the time called Three Blind Mice. The author of that work, Emile Littler, didn't want Christie's play confused with his.

The title The Mousetrap was suggested by Christie's son-in-law, Anthony Hicks, who observed that it was Hamlet's metaphoric description of the play he uses to "catch the conscience of the King."

In Agatha Christie's deliciously macabre play, a young couple, Giles and Mollie Ralston, have turned the old Monkswell Manor into a successful hotel. One winter day, the Ralstons are snowed in with some guests and a stranded traveler who crashed his car into a snowbank.

A policeman, Detective Sergeant Trotter, arrives on skis to warn everyone that a murderer is on the loose and headed for the hotel. When one of the guests (Mrs. Boyle) is killed, the others realize that the murderer is already there. Detective Sergeant Trotter begins his investigation.

Suspicion obviously falls on the troubled Christopher Wren, but soon it seems that any one of the snowed-in group could be the murderer. As the play progresses, we learn that the killer's first victim was a woman who served time in prison for abusing the three foster children placed in her care.

The body count continues, the plot thickens, and red herrings abound. Detective Sergeant Trotter plans to set a trap for the killer. Finally, in a shocking surprise twist ending, the murderer is revealed to be...

What, did you think I was going to tell you and ruin the play? Traditionally, after the play ends, the audience is asked not to reveal the identity of the murderer to those who haven't seen the play. I'm going to observe that tradition. You'll have to see the play for yourself to find out "who done it" and why.

The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 30,000 performances and counting. The original 1952 cast featured Sir Richard Attenborough as Detective Sergeant Trotter and his wife, Sheila Sim, as Mollie Ralston.

In 1974, after 9,000 performances, the production was moved to St. Martin's Theatre, where it still runs today. It even ran during the height of the Covid pandemic, albeit with limited seating.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest."

- Agatha Christie

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete live performance of Agatha Christie's classic play, The Mousetrap. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 11/23/25

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Pamelyn Casto

My poem, The Slugs, will be published in the January Issue of Highland Park Poetry for their Winter Muses Gallery.

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Notes For November 21st, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 21st, 1694, the legendary French writer and philosopher Voltaire was born. He was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris, France. He came from an upper class family; his father was a treasury official, his mother a noblewoman.

As a boy, Voltaire received his education at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit private school. There, he learned Latin and Greek. Later, he would become fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English.

Voltaire's father intended for him to become a lawyer, so after he completed his schooling he was sent to study law. But Voltaire wanted to be a writer. While pretending that he was apprenticed to a notary public, he had taken up the life of a bohemian poet.

His father found out what he was up to, and he was sent away to Normandy to study law, but he continued writing. When Voltaire's father arranged for him to work as secretary to the French ambassador to the Netherlands, he took the job.

In the Netherlands, he fell in love with a girl named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer, a French Protestant refugee. The couple planned to elope, but were foiled by Voltaire's father, who would not be scandalized by having a Protestant marry into his family.

This planted the seeds for Voltaire's lifelong seething hatred of not only the Catholic Church, but religion in general, as well as the aristocracy and bourgeois mores. Taking his famous pen name, he became one of France's greatest and most controversial writers.

Voltaire's poetry and prose works were of a polemic nature, and he possessed a rapacious wit. He wrote many polemic tracts, pamphlets, and books - over 2,000 during his lifetime. A leading figure of the French Enlightenment, his writings, radical for their time, often got him in trouble.

He was not an atheist; he believed in the existence of a higher power, but disputed the validity of the Bible and other religious books, considering them to be collections of fairy tales written by men that inspired ignorance, intolerance, cruelty, and violence.

Voltaire loathed religious institutions like the Catholic Church. In a letter to Frederick II, King of Prussia, he wrote, "[Catholicism] is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most blood-thirsty [religion] ever to infect the world."

He didn't single out the Church or Christianity in general for criticism. For the same reasons, he also blasted Judaism (which gave the world the Old Testament) as well as Islam, which he called "a false and barbarous sect" founded by a "false prophet."

Rejecting the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Voltaire believed that each race had its own distinct origin, and that no one race was superior to the others. For this reason, and because he had always championed civil liberties and human rights, he denounced slavery, adding to his reputation as a radical.

In 1717, the publication of Voltaire's epic poem La Henriade, a scathing satirical attack on the French monarchy and the Catholic Church, resulted in his arrest. He served almost a year in the Bastille. Imprisonment failed to temper his poison pen, and by 1726, he found himself in trouble again.

Outraged by Voltaire's retort to his insult, Chevalier de Rohan, a young aristocrat, obtained a royal lettre de cachet from King Louis XV - a warrant for Voltaire's arrest and imprisonment without trial.

To avoid serving more time at the Bastille, Voltaire fled to England. He returned to Paris nearly three years later. He continued to write and publish polemical essays, poetry, and prose. Though banned in France, his works were circulated secretly and remained popular as ever.

Voltaire's essay collection Philosophical Letters on the English praised the constitutional monarchy of England for its respect for human rights while condemning the French monarchy for violating them.

The outrage over his writings would escalate. He would flee arrest again, then return. Eventually, King Louis XV banned Voltaire entirely from France. He moved first to Germany, then settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his classic philosophical comic novel Candide - in only three days - and lived for 28 years.

When Voltaire finally returned to Paris in February of 1778, he was met with a hero's welcome. Around three hundred people came to visit him. He died three months later at the age of 83.

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Quote Of The Day

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"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

- Voltaire

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Voltaire's classic philosophical comic novel, Candide. Enjoy!

Notes For November 20th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 20th, 1875, Roderick Hudson, the classic first novel by the legendary American writer Henry James, was published. James emigrated to England, where he lived, wrote, and became a British subject.

He had previously written a novella, Watch and Ward (1871), which was published in serialized format by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. This early work, overly melodramatic and primitive in technique, would prove an embarrassment to James, and he disowned it.

Watch and Ward would not be published in book form until 1878, in a revised version. Thus, Roderick Hudson is considered by the author to be his first published novel.

The novel opens with Rowland Mallet, a wealthy patron of the arts, visiting his cousin Cecilia before leaving on a trip to Europe. He becomes enamored with a bust he sees. Later, he meets the sculptor, Roderick Hudson, a poor young law student and aspiring artist.

The two men strike up a friendship. Rowland offers to take Roderick to Italy, where he can concentrate on his art. He visits Roderick's mother and explains his intentions. She agrees to let him give up his law studies and go to Rome.

After a rough start, Roderick's technique improves and his artistic development takes off. Unfortunately, despite his talent, Roderick is an immature man-child who has trouble coping with his artistic genius. He is also distracted by the women around him.

Engaged to one woman, (Mary Garland) but attracted to another, (Augusta Blanchard) Roderick's romantic entanglements get worse when he meets Christina Light, a coquettish flirt who becomes his muse.

Although she likes Roderick, he's poor, and Christina is interested in marrying for wealth and position. She eventually marries a prince, and Roderick's life plunges into a downward spiral.

Roderick Hudson is considered to be Henry James' most accessible novel, though it does contain his trademark complexities and erotic overtones - in this case, homoerotic overtones in the relationship between Rowland and Roderick.

Christina Light - one of James's favorite creations - would return as the title character in his novel The Princess Casamassima (1886).

Henry James would go on to become of one of the greatest writers of his generation, famous for his brilliant novels and novellas such as The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The Bostonians (1886).

His most famous work was the classic horror novella The Turn of the Screw (1898). He also wrote plays, literary criticisms, travelogues, biographies, and memoirs. He died in 1916 at the age of 72.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant — no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes."

- Henry James

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Henry James' first novel, Roderick Hudson. Enjoy!

Notes For November 19th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 19th, 1942, the famous American poet Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco, California, to an extremely religious "hellfire Calvinist" family. She would reject her religion and become a poet.

After graduating Stanford with an English degree, she moved East to attend Columbia University, where she earned her Ph.D. By the age of 30, Sharon had spent nearly a decade writing poems, none of which satisfied her. She felt she was just imitating the styles of her favorite poets.

So, she sought out her own poetic voice, and at the age of 37, her first poetry collection, Satan Says (1980) was published. It won her the very first San Francisco Poetry Center Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Her second poetry collection, The Dead and the Living, (1984) won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lamont Poetry Prize. It sold over 50,000 copies. One of my favorite poems from this book is The Connoisseuse Of Slugs:

When I was a connoisseuse of slugs
I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the
naked jelly of those gold bodies,
translucent strangers glistening along the
stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies
at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel
to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt,
but I was not interested in that. What I liked
was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the
odor of the wall, and stand there in silence
until the slug forgot I was there
and sent its antennae up out of its
head, the glimmering umber horns
rising like telescopes, until finally the
sensitive knobs would pop out the
ends, delicate and intimate. Years later,
when I first saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.

Sharon's style of confessional poetry uses raw, often profane language and striking imagery within a plainly spoken narrative to convey truths in subjects such as family relationships, sexuality, the body, domestic violence, and political oppression.

She would continue to publish poetry collections; memorable volumes include The Gold Cell (1987), The Father (1993), and The Wellspring (1996).

Sharon's work has been anthologized in over 100 collections and has been translated into seven languages for international publication. From 1998-2000, she served as New York State Poet Laureate.

In 2005, Sharon became famous for a publication that had nothing to do with her poetry. First Lady Laura Bush had invited her to the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. She declined the invitation.

In an open letter published by the prominent liberal news magazine, The Nation, Sharon explained her reason for declining the invitation:

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness - as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing - against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition:" flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

In addition to her career as a poet, Sharon is also a teacher of English and creative writing. She lives in New York City, where she taught creative writing at New York University. Her 2012 poetry collection, Stag's Leap, made her the first American woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and also won her a Pulitzer Prize.

Sharon Olds' most recent poetry collection, Balladz, was published in 2022. It was a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize and also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The older I get, the more I feel almost beautiful."

- Sharon Olds

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Sharon Olds giving a poetry reading. Enjoy!

Notes For November 18th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 18th, 1939, the legendary Canadian writer Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her father was an entomologist, her mother a dietitian and nutritionist. As a result of her father's research in forest entomology, Margaret spent most of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec.

Although she didn't attend school full-time until she was eleven years old, from a young age, she was a voracious reader, with a special interest in Grimm's fairy tales, pocketbook mysteries, animal stories and comic books.

Margaret began writing her own stories at the age of six. As a teenager, she realized she wanted to be a professional writer. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, from which she graduated in 1957.

After graduation, Margaret enrolled at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, where she earned a B.A. degree in English, minoring in philosophy and French.

In 1961, the year she graduated from Victoria University, Margaret's first book, a poetry collection titled Double Persephone, was published. The privately printed book won its author the E.J. Pratt Medal.

With a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, Margaret enrolled at Radcliffe College to begin her graduate studies. The following year, she earned a Master's degree.

From there, she pursued more graduate studies at Harvard, but dropped out two years later, never completing her dissertation on "The English Metaphysical Romance."

She has taught English at many universities, including the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967-68), the University of Alberta (1969-79), and York University in Toronto (1971-72).

In 1969, Margaret Atwood's first novel was published. The Edible Woman was a bold, brilliant, experimental allegory that established her as a major talent. It told the story of Marian McAlpin, a market researcher.

Marion's sane, structured, consumer-oriented world falls out of focus and becomes a surreal nightmare of existential, feminist angst after her boyfriend, Peter Wollander, proposes marriage.

Food seems to take on human qualities, and Marian finds herself unable to eat because she identifies with it - she believes that, in asking her to marry him, Peter wants to metaphorically devour her. So, she bakes a cake in the shape of a woman and offers it to Peter as a substitute. He walks out and Marian eats the cake.

Margaret would continue exploring both existentialist and feminist themes in her novels Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), and Life Before Man (1979). Her 1981 novel, Bodily Harm, features a unique heroine - a journalist and breast cancer survivor who gets caught up in violent civil unrest on an island in the Caribbean.

Her next novel would become a celebrated classic of dystopic science fiction, though she considered it speculative fiction. The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is set in the future, in the Republic of Gilead.

The Republic of Gilead used to be the United States, until a violent military coup by Christian extremists killed the President in a terrorist attack, then ousted the Congress and abolished the Constitution.

The new republic is a racist, chauvinistic, totalitarian Christian theocracy - a regime of social and religious orthodoxy inspired by the Old Testament and installed in response to a declining population (due to infertility) and a marked lack of "values."

In this dystopian society, sex is considered fundamentally degrading, so men must abstain from all forms of sex except marital intercourse for the purpose of procreation.

Sex is allowed outside of marriage for reproductive purposes if one's wife is sterile. In this case, a married man may keep concubines called "handmaids" for breeding. This Christian theocratic model society is full of corruption, cruelty, and hypocrisy in general.

The elite men who rule the Republic employ Jezebels - prostitutes who work at unofficial state-run brothels. Although abortion is a crime, babies born with any kind of defect mysteriously vanish not long after their birth and are never seen again.

Widows, nuns, and dissident women (and handmaids who fail to conceive a child after a certain period of time) are exiled. Older, infertile women are forced into lives of domestic servitude. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death or a long, torturous prison term.

The novel-within-a-novel is part straightforward narrative, part experimental, stream-of-consciousness narrative. It's mostly told by a handmaid, Offred - a slave name that means "Of Fred," as she is a concubine who belongs to her master, Fred.

Offred's testament of her life in the Republic of Gilead, recorded on a series of unnumbered cassette tapes, is transcribed sometime in the distant future by two professors who arrange the tapes in "probable order." The transcription is left unfinished.

The Handmaid's Tale won many awards: the 1985 Governor General's Award, the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It also won the very first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987.

The novel was adapted in 1990 as an acclaimed feature film written by English playwright / screenwriter Harold Pinter and directed by legendary German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff, best known for his brilliant 1979 adaptation of legendary German writer Gunter Grass's classic antifascist allegorical novel, The Tin Drum (1959).

In 2017, The Handmaid's Tale was adapted as a TV series for the streaming service Hulu. It ran for six seasons, the final season released earlier this year.

Margaret Atwood continued to write great novels, many of which won awards. In 2003, she ventured again into science fiction with her novel Oryx and Crake, the first in a classic trilogy.

It's set in a postapocalyptic world where there are only two classes of people - the very rich and the very poor - and genetic engineering has gone out of control, resulting in the crossbreeding of humans and animals.

Crake is a brilliant geneticist who plans to wipe out the destructive human race and replace it with Crakers - peaceful, environmentally friendly human-like creatures.

Crake is obsessed with Oryx, a mysterious Asian woman whom he thinks he recognizes from a pornographic film she performed in as a young girl. He hires Oryx for sexual services and to be a teacher for the Crakers, but she soon becomes his lover.

The second book in the trilogy, The Year of the Flood, was published in 2009. Although best known for her novels, Margaret Atwood's large body of work includes poetry collections, short story collections, children's books, and nonfiction.

Margaret's first nonfiction work was a seminal literary criticism titled Survival: A Thematic Guide To Canadian Literature (1972). She has also written for television.

Now in her 80s, she still writes great novels. In September of 2015, she published The Heart Goes Last, another work of dystopic science fiction.

The Heart Goes Last is set in a future where the economy and society have collapsed. Stan and Charmaine, a young married couple, live in their car and try to survive amid mass joblessness and roving criminal gangs.

A mysterious corporation called Positron offers a solution - the Positron Project - a social engineering project that promises employment and a decent house to everyone who signs up. It's an attempt to rebuild the shattered economy.

The catch is that you only get to live in your new home six months out of the year. For the other six months, you must give up your freedom and be incarcerated in one of Positron's prisons. A desperate Stan and Charmaine sign up, not knowing what they're in for.

The darling of talk shows and endorsed by politicians, the Positron Project is really a front for the corporation's organ harvesting operations and horrific experiments on human beings.

Margaret Atwood's latest novel, The Testaments, published in 2019, is a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. Set 15 years after the previous novel, it's narrated by three women: Aunt Lydia, Agnes, a young woman living in Gilead, and Daisy, a young Canadian woman.

The plot centers on Aunt Lydia recruiting three young women, including Agnes, in a plot to smuggle scandalous evidence against Gilead's elite into Canada. This results in a purge followed by a military coup that ends the Republic of Gilead and restores the U.S. government.

Hulu and MGM announced a planned TV series adaptation of The Testaments as a TV series. It was greenlit in April, filming began that month, and was completed in August. The series is scheduled to premiere in March of 2026.

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Quote Of The Day

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"You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer."

- Margaret Atwood

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Margaret Atwood discussing her recent novel, The Testaments, before a live audience at the Politics & Prose bookstore and coffeehouse. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 11/16/25

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Pamelyn Casto

I'm pleased to say I won a First Place in a poetry contest I like to enter every year. I came so close in other categories of the contest - I got 6 second places, 1 third place, and six other poems made it to the top ten.

Last year I won 4 first place prizes. Now I'm eager to see what next year might bring-- maybe no wins at all. You writes yer poems and you takes yer chances. LOL

My latest chapbook project in the Masters Series, Tom Hazuka's Mixture: Flash Fiction, was just released. (This is my ninth one in the series.)

For these projects, I choose a well-known writer of flash literature, interview that writer, and in turn, the writer provides me with a craft essay and six stories.

It's a great way to learn more about writing flash literature, from various talented writers, so be sure to download the latest chapbook - it's free.

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Notes For November 14th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 14th, 1851, Moby Dick, the classic novel by the legendary American writer Herman Melville, was published in the United States. It had been published in England as The Whale a month earlier - a release that proved to be a disaster.

Melville's classic adventure novel was based in part on the true story of Mocha Dick, a giant albino sperm whale so named because his territory was the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha.

For many years, Mocha Dick terrorized the whaling ships that sailed through his territory. He was known to attack ships with incredible ferocity. He supposedly had around twenty harpoons stuck in his back by previous whalers.

By the time Mocha Dick was finally killed in the late 1830s, he had successfully fought off one hundred whaling crews and destroyed many ships. Sailors told stories about him in every port, and his legend grew.

When Herman Melville read a book about Mocha Dick, he became fascinated by the true story of a giant killer sperm whale and saw in it the potential for a great novel, one he hoped would prove to be his magnum opus. He had already become famous for such classic novels as Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847).

The narrator of Moby Dick is Ishmael, an itinerant sailor who signs up for work on the whaling ship Pequod along with his new friend Queequeg, a master harpooner from a South Seas island where his father was the chief of a cannibal tribe.

Also on the crew of the Pequod are harpooners Tashtego and Daggoo, and chief mate Starbuck. The crew is under the command of Captain Ahab, a psychotic tyrant with a hidden agenda.

While on a whaling trip off the coast of Japan, Captain Ahab's ship was attacked by Moby Dick, a giant albino sperm whale. The ship was destroyed, and in the process, the great whale bit off part of Captain Ahab's leg.

The crew of the Pequod has no idea that their captain plans to risk their lives to satisfy his monomaniacal desire for revenge against Moby Dick. When it becomes obvious that this is no ordinary whaling trip, Starbuck is the only one who objects.

Captain Ahab isn't deterred from his quest when Starbuck points out the madness of his plan and that revenge is against their religion - they're Quakers. In the novel's exciting climax, Ahab and nearly his entire crew pay the ultimate price for his revenge. Ishmael is the sole survivor of the Pequod's final battle with Moby Dick.

Although today Moby Dick is rightfully considered an epic masterpiece of American literature, the novel was savaged upon its first publication in England. Critics referred to it as "so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature."

The scathing reviews were thanks to Melville's monumentally incompetent British publisher, who chopped up his already experimental manuscript for the censors, rearranged the ending, and forgot to include the crucial epilogue.

Melville had no idea that the UK version of his novel was so badly botched until it was too late. Shocked and confused by the bad reviews in British magazines, he was relieved when Moby Dick was published in America in its correct and unexpurgated original version.

Unfortunately, by then, the damage was done. The American reading public's interest had changed from sea adventures to tales of the American West and the Yukon gold rush, and though Moby Dick did receive good reviews from American critics, readers still remembered the bad reviews of the English critics.

The warm reception by American critics to the definitive version of Moby Dick was not enough to undo the damage done to the novel by its British publisher and make it the magnum opus Herman Melville had hoped for. It sold less than 3,000 copies during his lifetime. His total earnings from it were $556.37

He continued to write over the next several years, but after his novel The Confidence-Man was published in 1857, he plunged into alcoholism and depression and his writing came to a screeching halt.

In 1876, Melville published his classic epic poem Clarel, and it sold so poorly that he couldn't afford to buy back the unsold copies at cost, so they were burned. Unable to make money as a writer, he scraped by as a customs agent for New York City.

When Herman Melville died in 1891 at the age of 76, he had been completely forgotten as a writer. In a final insult, an article on Melville published in The New York Times ten days after his death mistakenly referred to him as Hiram Melville.

His last work, the classic novella Billy Budd, Sailor, was published posthumously in 1924 and became an instant classic that would rekindle an interest in his work. Moby Dick would finally receive its due as one of the greatest American novels of all time.

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Quote Of The Day

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"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it."

- Herman Melville

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby Dick. Enjoy!

Notes For November 13th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 13th, 1850, the legendary Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a renowned civil engineer who designed, built, and maintained lighthouses - a family business which Stevenson's uncles and grandfather worked for.

As a boy, Robert Louis Stevenson was sickly. Prone to coughs and fevers, which worsened considerably during the winters, he most likely suffered from bronchiectasis resulting from pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough. Stevenson's parents were devout Presbyterians, but not incredibly strict.

His nanny, Alison Cunningham, was a fiercely religious Calvinist. Though her religious fervor gave Stevenson nightmares, she nursed him tenderly through his illnesses. She also read to him often and told him folk tales, planting the first seeds of his writing career.

When he was six years old, Stevenson began his schooling. Odd looking and eccentric, he didn't fit in with the other kids. His frequent illnesses kept him out of school, so he received most of his early education from private tutors.

He didn't learn to read until he was seven or eight, but he began writing stories before that, dictating them to his mother and nanny. After he learned to read and write, he continued to write compulsively. When he was eleven, he entered Edinburgh Academy.

At the age of sixteen, Robert Louis Stevenson published his first piece, an essay titled The Pentland Rising: A Page Of History, 1666 (1866), which was an account of the covenanters' rebellion. His father, who was proud of his interest in writing, paid for the printing.

However, he expected Robert to follow in his footsteps and join the family business. So, when he entered the University of Edinburgh in November of 1867, he majored in engineering. He hated it.

Having no interest in or enthusiasm for the study of engineering, he avoided lectures whenever he could. He joined the Speculative Society - the University's exclusive debating club - whose members would become lifelong friends of his.

During vacations, Stevenson traveled with his father around the Scottish islands to inspect the family's lighthouses and other engineering works. He enjoyed these travels, but only as a source of prospective writing material.

In 1871, Stevenson finally told his father that he wanted to be a writer and not an engineer. His father was displeased, but agreed to a compromise: Stevenson would study law to have something to fall back on.

While he studied, Stevenson adopted a bohemian lifestyle. He wore his hair long, rejected his religion, and spent his meager allowance on cheap pubs and brothels. Although he graduated and qualified for the Scottish Bar, he never practiced law.

Instead, he began his writing career. When his parents learned that he had become a libertine, they disowned him. It would be years before he reconciled with them.

In late 1873, Stevenson went to England to visit his cousin. While there, he hobnobbed with London's literati and struck up a friendship with Leslie Stephen, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, who was impressed by his work.

When Stephen visited Edinburgh in 1875, he met with Stevenson and took him to see a friend of his, William Henley, a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary. He was a colorful, talkative character who had a wooden leg.

Henley and Stevenson became friends, and it is believed that the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island was inspired by Henley.

Stevenson continued to travel. One of his journeys was a canoe trip taken through Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, his old friend from the Speculative Society. The trip would serve as the basis of his first book, An Inland Voyage, (1878) a travelogue.

The canoe trip would take him to Grez in September of 1876, where he would meet Fanny Osbourne, a separated single mother ten years his senior. They would become lovers the following year.

In August of 1878, Fanny returned to her home in San Francisco while Stevenson stayed in Europe and went on a 12-day, 120-mile solo hike through the Cevennes Mountains in South central France.

Stevenson wrote of the journey in his next book, Travels With A Donkey In The Cevannes. (1879). It was one of the earliest nonfiction books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities. To prepare for the trip, Stevenson commissioned one of the first sleeping bags to be made for him.

Using the money he earned from Travels, Stevenson booked second class passage on the steamship Devonia and sailed to New York City. From there, he traveled across the country by train, bound for San Francisco, where Fanny was waiting for him. This trip was chronicled in his book The Amateur Emigrant, which would be published posthumously in 1895.

Unfortunately, when Stevenson reached Monterey, the trip had taken a huge toll on his fragile health. Too weak to go on to San Francisco, he was joined in Monterey by Fanny, who nursed him back to health. They were married in May of 1880.

After Stevenson regained his health, they went to England, where Fanny would help her husband reconcile with his parents. He and Fanny spent the next several years living in various places throughout England and Scotland, searching for a home that would be suitable for his fragile health.

As he wrote his most famous works, his career took off. Treasure Island (1883), his first novel, was an adventure for children about a boy, Jim Hawkins, who helps search for treasure after receiving a map from pirate Billy Bones, a rum-guzzling lodger at his parents' inn.

Originally titled The Sea Cook before an editor changed it, Treasure Island was a rarity for a children's novel due to its depiction of unrestrained drinking and its moral ambiguity, with the charming and ruthless pirate Long John Silver proving himself to be not all bad.

Kidnapped (1886) was set amidst the historical events of 18th century Scotland. It told the story of Daniel Balfour, an orphaned 17-year-old boy who goes to live with his miserly Uncle Ebenezer. He doesn't know that his uncle cheated his father out of his estate.

When Ebenezer's plan for Daniel's "accidental" death fails, he tricks him into going on board the brig Covenant, where he sells Daniel into slavery. Daniel is shanghaied and forced to work as the ship's new cabin boy.

The Black Arrow (1888) was a swashbuckling adventure set during the Wars of the Roses. In it, young Dick Shelton rescues his lady, Joanna Sedley, becomes a knight, and joins the Black Arrow outlaw gang to avenge the murder of his father, Sir Harry Shelton. The killer turns out to be Sir Daniel Brackley - Dick's guardian.

Though he wrote other books, Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous novel was the classic novella, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1888). In this psychological horror tale, brilliant doctor Henry Jekyll is a good man troubled by mankind's capacity for cruelty.

He invents a potion that he hopes will remove humanity's dark side once and for all. Instead, the potion unleashes it as a physical manifestation, transforming Jekyll into Edward Hyde, a younger, stronger, bestial man.

Cruel, remorseless, misanthropic, and downright evil, Hyde carouses with prostitutes, steals, and basically terrorizes London. At first, Jekyll is able to change back into himself, but soon, larger doses of potion are required.

When the potion is used up, Jekyll tries to make more, but he can't - it was an imperfection in one of the ingredients that made it work. Realizing that his next transformation into Hyde will be permanent, Jekyll commits suicide.

In addition to his novels, short story collections, and travelogues, Stevenson also wrote poetry collections. His most famous was a collection of poems for children called A Child's Garden Of Verses (1885). Containing the memorable poems My Shadow and The Lamplighter, the book would be popular with adults as well.

Believing its climate would suit his fragile health perfectly, in 1890, Stevenson bought 400 acres of land in Upolu, one of the Samoan islands. He moved there, built an estate in the village of Vailima, and took the native name Tusitala, which means teller of tales in Samoan.

Believing that the European colonial officials who ruled Samoa were incompetent, Stevenson blasted them in his nonfiction book, A Footnote To History (1892), which was a chronicle of the Samoan Civil War. The book caused such an uproar that Stevenson feared that the colonial officials would deport him.

In 1894, a bout with writer's block drove Stevenson into a deep depression. He feared he would never write again. Just when he had hit bottom, he suddenly regained his creative juices and began work on a new novel called Weir Of Hermiston.

Believing that it was his best work and reportedly saying that "it's so good, it frightens me," Stevenson channeled all his energy into his writing, oblivious to the tremendous toll it was taking on his fragile health. His last novel would remain unfinished.

Robert Louis Stevenson died suddenly on December 3rd, 1894, at the age of 44, most likely from a stroke. He remains one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 19th century.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Enjoy!

Notes For November 12th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 12th, 1945, the famous American nonfiction writer and journalist Tracy Kidder was born in New York City. After graduating from Phillips Academy prep school in 1963, Kidder enrolled at Harvard, where he initially majored in political science.

He switched his major to English after taking a creative writing course taught by poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald. After graduating from Harvard in 1967, Tracy Kidder served for two years in Vietnam as a first lieutenant for Military Intelligence.

When his tour of duty was up, he returned to the U.S. and began a writing career, eventually enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master's degree.

While studying at the University of Iowa, Kidder wrote his first nonfiction book. Commissioned by Atlantic Monthly magazine, The Road To Yuba City (1974) was a straightforward, non-judgmental chronicle of the Juan Corona serial murder trial in Yuba City, California.

Corona, a farm labor contractor, was accused of preying on poor migrant farm workers, savagely murdering twenty-five of them by various methods including shooting, stabbing, and bludgeoning. Corona was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 25 consecutive life sentences.

In researching his book, Tracy Kidder rode along on trains packed with migrant farm workers, experiencing their living and working conditions firsthand. During the trial, he interviewed the victims' families and examined all facets of the case.

In doing so, he exposed incredible incompetence in both the prosecution and the defense, leaving the impression that the whole trial was horribly botched. To this day, some believe that Juan Corona was wrongfully convicted.

Unfortunately, The Road To Yuba City proved to be a critical and commercial failure. Kidder disowned it, explaining in a 1995 interview:

I can't say anything intelligent about that book, except that I learned never to write about a murder case. The whole experience was disgusting, so disgusting, in fact, that in 1981 I went to Doubleday and bought back the rights to the book.

"I don't want The Road to Yuba City to see the light of day again," Kidder vowed, and it hasn't. Today, copies are very hard to find; prices start at around $100 on eBay.

Tracy Kidder's next nonfiction book, however, proved to be a huge success in many ways. The Soul Of A New Machine (1981) chronicled a turf war between teams of computer designers within Data General Corporation, which was a top minicomputer vendor in the 1970s.

The engineers are presented with a daunting challenge: in order to compete with the new VAX minicomputer of rival company Digital Equipment Corporation, they must design a new 32-bit minicomputer in one year.

Kidder's book takes a seemingly dry subject and turns it into a riveting suspense thriller, following the engineers as they face hectic schedules (including marathon 24-hour work sessions) and tremendous pressure to complete their task on time.

The Soul Of A New Machine became a big hit with both critics and readers, and is considered a classic work of journalism. It won Kidder a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1982.

Tracy Kidder continued to write great nonfiction books. House (1985) follows a team of home builders as they struggle to build a family's home on time, within their budget, and to their clients' satisfaction. The book follows the construction of the house from the drawing of the blueprints to the day that the family moves in.

Among Schoolchildren (1989) follows dedicated, compassionate inner-city elementary school teacher Chris Zajac through a whole school year as she struggles to provide a decent education to her poor, neglected, mostly Hispanic students in a riveting and brutally honest look at what it really means to be a teacher.

Old Friends (1994) follows Lou and Joe, roommates at a nursing home in Northampton, Massachusetts. In Home Town (2000), Kidder's subject is the town of Northampton itself, as he tells the stories of some colorful residents.

Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003) is a biography of the noted physician and anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer and a narrative about the struggles he faces as he tries to provide health care to the poor in third world countries.

In 2005, Kidder wrote My Detachment: A Memoir - an account of his experiences in the Vietnam War, from eager enlistee (and former ROTC cadet) to disillusioned veteran, as he comes to understand the absurdity and immorality of the war he volunteered to fight in. The book is reminiscent of classic antiwar satires such as Catch-22 and M*A*S*H.

Kidder's 2009 book, Strength In What Remains, follows the journey of Deogratias, a young African man from Burundi who in 1994 fled his country's bloody, genocidal civil war and settled in New York City. He was nearly broke and barely able to speak English.

Deogratias delivered groceries for slave wages by day and slept in Central Park at night. Driven by ambition and determination, he worked his way through medical school and became a doctor, then an American citizen. Kidder follows him as he returns to Burundi to build a medical clinic for his poor countrymen.

Tracy Kidder has proven himself to be one of the best contemporary writers of nonfiction. His most recent book, Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission To Bring Healing To Homeless People, was published last year. It followed a remarkable physician.

Dr. Jim O'Connell, a Harvard Medical School graduate, was about to complete his residency at Massachusetts General when the hospital's chief of medicine approached him with a proposition. Would he defer a prestigious fellowship for a year to help create an organization dedicated to providing health care to Boston's homeless?

O'Connell said yes, and in doing so, found his life's calling, traversing the streets of Boston to provide the homeless with not only health care, but also hot soup, warm socks, friendship, empathy, and humor.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I think that the nonfiction writer's fundamental job is to make what is true believable."

- Tracy Kidder

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Tracy Kidder discussing his most recent book, Rough Sleepers, before a live audience at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC.

Notes For November 11th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 11th, 1821, the legendary Russian writer and philosopher Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow, Russia. The second of six kids, Fyodor's father Mikhail was a military surgeon and violent alcoholic.

Mikhail practiced at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow. Although his parents forbade it, as a young boy, Fyodor would visit the patients in the hospital garden. He loved to listen to their stories.

Mikhail Dostoyevsky was known to exercise despotic rule over his children. After coming home from work, he would take a nap and force his children to stand by him while he slept and swat any flies that came near his head.

In 1839, two years after losing his wife to tuberculosis, Mikhail died as well, supposedly from natural causes, though legend has it that his serfs, tired of his abuse, finally snapped during his last drunken rage, killing him by pouring vodka down his throat until he drowned.

In 1837, after his mother died, 16-year-old Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his brother were sent to the Military Engineering Academy in Saint Petersburg, as their father was determined to make soldiers of them, even though Fyodor was epileptic - he suffered his first seizure at the age of nine.

He would use his experience with the condition to create epileptic characters in his novels, such as Prince Myshkin in The Idiot (1869) and Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov. (1881)

At the Academy, Dostoyevsky hated mathematics, but came to love literature as he studied the works of William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Blaise Pascal, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. He was a good student, did well on his exams, and graduated in 1841, receiving his commission.

During his senior year, he wrote two romantic plays, influenced by the works of German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller. Unfortunately, these early plays have been lost.

While serving in the army, (where he would be promoted to the rank of lieutenant) Dostoyevsky translated Balzac's novel Eugenie Grandet into Russian. It received hardly any notice, so after he left the army in 1844, he began writing his own fiction.

The following year, his first work, an epistolary novella called Poor Folk, was published in the magazine Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and received great acclaim. Legend has it that poet Nikolai Nekrasov, the editor of Sovremennik, said of Dostoyevsky, "A new Gogol has arisen!"

At the age of 24, Fyodor Dostoyevsky had become a literary celebrity. Unfortunately, his second novel, The Double (1846) didn't fare as well as his first. The Double, a psychological study of a government clerk gone mad.

The clerk believes that a co-worker has stolen his identity and become his doppelganger. The novel was trashed by critics, despite Dostoyevsky's eerily accurate depiction of one man's descent into schizophrenia. After the failure of The Double, Dostoyevsky's fame began to fade.

In 1849, while struggling to get his writing career back on track, Fyodor Dostoyevsky suffered another devastating setback. He was arrested for being a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, a liberal intellectual group founded by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of French utopian socialist Charles Fourier.

The Petrashevsky Circle opposed the czarist autocracy and Russian serfdom. Their members included writers, teachers, students, government officials, military officers, and others.

Tzar Nicholas I, fearful that the revolutions being waged in other countries would spread to Russia, mistakenly believed that the Petrashevsky Circle was a subversive revolutionary organization and had its members arrested.

After being forced to endure the psychological torture of a mock execution, Dostoyevsky and his fellow Circle members had their death sentences commuted to prison terms. Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a prison camp in Omsk, Siberia.

While serving his time at the squalid, freezing, and filthy prison camp, he became disillusioned with Western ideas and converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity, planting the seeds of the next phase of his literary career. He was released from prison in 1854 and returned to the Army, where he was required to serve in the Siberian Regiment.

Dostoyevsky served for five years in the Regiment's Seventh Line Battalion, stationed at a fortress in Kazakhstan. While there, he began an affair with Maria Isayeva, the wife of an acquaintance from Siberia. He married her in 1857, after the death of her husband.

In 1859, the couple moved to Saint Petersburg, where Fyodor ran a series of unsuccessful literary magazines with his older brother, Mikhail. Their last magazine, Ephoka (Epoch) was shut down as the result of its coverage of the Polish Uprising of 1863.

The following year, Dostoyevsky was devastated by the deaths of his wife and brother and plunged into depression and gambling addiction. He gambled away what little he earned from his writings.

He had published several memorable novels, including The Village Of Stepanchikovo (1859), The Insulted And Humiliated (1861), Notes From The House Of The Dead (1862), and Notes From Underground (1864)

By 1865, he was broke. While working on Crime And Punishment, a novel that would become one of his masterpieces, he wrote a novella in order to fulfill his contract and avoid losing his copyrights to his publisher.

The Gambler, first published in 1867, was a grim drama about a tutor who plunges into the depths of gambling addiction, inspired by the author's own ordeal with the sickness.

With the publication of Crime And Punishment in 1886, Fyodor Dostoyevsky established himself as one of the greatest novelists of all time. The landmark novel told the story of Raskolnikov, a poor student who drops out and moves into a tiny room in Saint Petersburg.

Desperate for money, but too proud accept help from even his closest friend, Raskolnikov finally reaches his breaking point and decides to rob and murder Alyona Ivanovna, a nasty, elderly pawnbroker / moneylender.

Unfortunately, Alyona's half-sister Lizaveta walks in on the crime, forcing Raskolnikov to kill her as well. Tortured by guilt, Raskolnikov falls into an unbalanced state, drawing the suspicion of police detective Porfiry.

Raskolnikov falls in love with Sonya, a devout Christian woman driven to prostitution by her father. Seeing her as a spirit guide, Raskolnikov confesses his crime to Sonya. She reads him the gospel story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

Sonya gives Raskolnikov hope for his own redemption. He goes to the police, confesses, and is sent to a prison camp in Siberia. Sonya follows him, and the novel ends on a note of hope that Raskolnikov will be redeemed under her influence.

Dostoyevsky would follow Crime And Punishment with another masterwork, The Idiot (1869). The tragic story of the love triangle between Christ-like, epileptic Prince Myshkin, fallen woman Nastasya Fillipovna, and Myshkin's friend Rogozhin, would not be translated into English until the 20th century.

In his tragic quest to defend her honor from ridicule and contempt, Prince Myshkin's love for Nastasya is a pure, Christian kind of love, while Rogozhin is driven by lust - which eventually drives him to murder and madness. Another man, Ganya, wants to marry Nastasya just for her dowry, so he can improve his social status.

Dostoyevsky's last novel is considered by most to be his masterpiece - and one of the greatest novels of all time. The Brothers Karamazov (1881) is a dense, philosophical 750+ page epic novel.

It explores and debates the nature of God, morality, and free will. Part satire of human corruption, part a meditation on faith in an age of skepticism, and part murder mystery and courtroom thriller, the novel follows buffoonish, lecherous miser Fyodor Karamazov and his grown sons.

When Fyodor is murdered, his oldest son Dmitri becomes the prime suspect. Each of the Karamazov brothers represents a part of the Russian character. Dmitri is a selfish lout, Ivan is a tortured intellectual, and Alyosha is the spiritual seeker.

Alyosha is Dostoyevsky's heroic prototype of the Christian idealist, yet the Church is not spared from criticism. As Russia stands on the brink of socialist revolution, Ivan delivers one of the most potent criticisms of organized religion ever written.

Although much admired as a writer, Dostoyevsky courted controversy with views that were considered anti-Semitic. In A Writer's Diary, a two volume collection of essays and short stories, he perceived the ethnocentrism and influence of Jews in Russia's border regions as a threat to Russian peasants living in those areas.

However, he would later argue in favor of giving Jews equal rights in Russian society, advising Tzar Alexander II to give Jews the right to assume positions of influence such as professorships at universities. He also expressed a desire to peacefully reconcile Christians and Jews so they could come together in brotherhood.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky spent his last years living at the Staraya Russa resort in Northern Russia. He died of a lung hemorrhage from emphysema and an epileptic seizure on February 9th, 1881, at the age of 59. He still remains a major literary influence.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classic novel The Idiot. Enjoy!

Notes For November 7th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 7th, 1913, the legendary French writer, philosopher, and journalist Albert Camus was born in El Taref, Algeria. Throughout his life, Algeria was a French colony, and what he saw of colonial life was reflected in his writings and philosophy.

Camus never knew his father Lucien, who died when he was a year old. Lucien was killed in the Battle of the Marne during World War I. Albert and his mother, who was Spanish and half-deaf, lived in poverty in the Belcourt section of Algiers.

While studying at the University of Algiers, Camus excelled at both academics and soccer. His career as a star goalkeeper was cut short when he contracted tuberculosis. The disease came and went over the years.

After graduating from university, Camus joined the French Communist Party. He was not a hardcore communist, and when he became involved with the Algerian People's Party, the Soviet Union denounced him as a Trotskyite and had the French Communist Party expel him.

The Algerian People's Party was a socialist party led by prominent Algerian nationalist Messali Hadji - one of many leftist parties that had formed a coalition centered around Algerian independence from French rule.

The fragile coalition would break apart due to infighting; the Soviet Union was determined to see a communist Algeria under its control, but the parties not allied with the Soviets were calling for a fully independent Algeria.

After being expelled by the French Communist Party, Albert Camus would associate himself with the French anarchist movement. He began a career in journalism and wrote for socialist newspapers. Meanwhile, the looming threat of Hitler increased.

Camus went to France and tried to enlist in the military but was disqualified because of his recurring tuberculosis. During the Nazi occupation of France, he joined the French Resistance.

The French Resistance cell Camus joined was called Combat, and he served as the editor-in-chief of its underground newspaper of the same name, writing under the pseudonym Beauchard.

When the Allies liberated France, Camus was there to witness and report on the defeat of the Nazis. Later, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, he was one of the few French newspaper editors to speak out against the bombing and express disgust.

It was during the Nazi occupation of France that Albert Camus would publish his first novel. The Stranger (1942) was a classic work of existentialist philosophical fiction.

Meursault, a young Algerian, drifts aimlessly through the tumultuous French Algerian landscape. Unable to feel for anyone including himself, he attends his mother's funeral, meets a girl, becomes entangled in the life of a local pimp, and ends up inexplicably killing a man.

Arrested, jailed, and put through an absurd trial, Meursault's defense is obviously a deficiency of character - he's a product of his environment. In telling his story, Camus explores the paradox of existentialism - the search for meaning in a meaningless world.

A year after The Stranger was published, Camus met the legendary French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play, The Flies. The two men became close friends. Camus referred to Sartre as his "study partner."

In 1947, Camus published his second novel, The Plague. Although set in the 1940s, this classic novel was inspired by an epidemic of cholera that ravaged the population of the Algerian city of Oran in 1849 - right after France colonized Algeria.

In the novel, the streets of modern Oran become infested with rats carrying the plague. The rats start dying en masse, but not before transmitting the disease to the human population.

Dr. Bernard Rieux, a wealthy physician, is the first to recognize that a plague is spreading. He alerts the authorities, who waste time quibbling over what action to take. Rieux opens a plague ward in the town hospital, and its 80 beds are filled in three days.

As the city struggles to contain the plague, the authorities are left with no option but to seal the city to keep the plague from ravaging all of Algeria. One man tries to get criminals to smuggle him out of the city.

Dr. Rieux teams up with civil servant Joseph Grand and tourist Jean Tarrou to treat all the incoming plague cases. Meanwhile, Father Paneloux, an ambitious Catholic priest, declares that the plague is an act of God unleashed to punish the citizens for their sins.

The desperate people of Oran flock to the Church in droves and a new plague begins to ravage the city - the plague of religion. When Father Paneloux witnesses firsthand the efforts to contain the plague and the horrors that the disease causes, the priest has a change of heart.

In the 1950s, Camus devoted his life to human rights causes. He worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but resigned when the UN decided to recognize Spain's fascist dictatorship under General Franco.

When the Algerian War broke out in 1954, Camus found himself at a political crossroad. He was in favor of Algerian independence, but opposed the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) freedom fighters - Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas backed by the Soviet Union.

As the vicious FLN guerrillas fought the equally vicious French colonial army, Camus feared for the lives of the innocent Algerian and French citizens caught in the crossfire. He ultimately sided with the French, alienating himself from his friends, including Jean-Paul Sartre.

Undaunted by the criticism, Camus worked behind the scenes to save the lives of imprisoned Algerians who had been sentenced to death by the French colonial government. He was a vocal opponent of capital punishment, a position he expressed in his classic essay, Reflections on the Guillotine.

In 1956, The Fall, Camus' last novel published during his lifetime, was released. The following year, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to his novels, he wrote plays, short stories, essays, and nonfiction.

Four years later, on January 4th, 1960, Albert Camus was riding in a car driven by his publisher and friend, Michel Gallimard, when they were both killed in an accident. Camus had originally intended to travel by train with his wife and twin daughters, but decided to ride with Gallimard instead. He was 46 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

- Albert Camus

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the full length documentary Albert Camus - The Madness of Sincerity. Enjoy!