Maya Angelou Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Maya Angelou, born April 4, 1928.

Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou’s series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

George Herbert Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to George Herbert, born April 3, 1593.

George Herbert was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as “one of the foremost British devotional lyricists.” He was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University’s Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He sat in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.

After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him “a most glorious saint and seer.”

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Anne Waldman Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Anne Waldman, born April 2, 1945.

Anne Waldman is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outriders Poetry Project experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has also been connected to the Beat Generation poets.

Born in Millville, New Jersey, Waldman was raised on MacDougal Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and received her B.A. degree from Bennington College in 1966.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Abraham Maslow Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Abraham Maslow, born April 1, 1908.

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who created Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a “bag of symptoms”. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Andrew Marvell Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Andrew Marvell, born March 31, 1621.

Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song “To His Coy Mistress”, to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in “Upon Appleton House” and “The Garden”, the political address “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”, and the later personal and political satires “Flecknoe” and “The Character of Holland”.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Anna Sewell Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Anna Sewell, born March 30, 1820.

Anna Sewell was an English novelist. She is known as the author of the 1877 novel Black Beauty, her only published work, which is considered one of the top ten best-selling novels for children, although the author intended the work for an adult audience. Sewell died only five months after Black Beauty’s publication, having lived long enough to see her only novel become a success.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Amy Sedaris Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Amy Sedaris, born March 29, 1961.

Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, comedian, and writer. Most recently, she has appeared in both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett as Peli Motto. She played Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central comedy series Strangers with Candy and the prequel film Strangers with Candy, which she also wrote.

Sedaris appeared as Hurshe Heartshe in the Adult Swim comedy series The Heart, She Holler, as Princess Carolyn in the Netflix animated comedy series BoJack Horseman, and as Mimi Kanasis in the Netflix sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She received further critical acclaim as the creator and star of the TruTV surreal comedy series At Home with Amy Sedaris which earned her two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series.

Sedaris has appeared in various films, including Maid in Manhattan, School of Rock (2003), Elf, Bewitched, Chicken Little, Shrek the Third, Jennifer’s Body, Puss in Boots, Chef, Ghost Team, Handsome, and The Lion King.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Iris Chang Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Iris Chang, born March 28, 1968.

Iris Shun-Ru Chang was an American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanjing Massacre, The Rape of Nanking, and in 2003, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography Finding Iris Chang, and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. The independent 2007 documentary film Nanking was based on her work and dedicated to her memory.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Dana Stabenow Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Dana Stabenow, born March 27, 1952.

Dana Stabenow is an American author of science fiction, mystery/crime fiction, suspense/thriller, and historical adventure novels.

Many of Stabenow’s books are set in her home state of Alaska, where she was raised by her single mother who lived and worked on a fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska, and feature numerous descriptions of Alaska’s geography, geology, weather, and wildlife.

Stabenow received a BA in journalism from the University of Alaska in 1973 and, after deciding to try her hand as an author, later enrolled in UAA’s MFA program.

Her first novel, Second Star, was bought by Ace Science Fiction in 1990. It was followed by two other science fiction books. Her first Kate Shugak mystery, A Cold Day for Murder, won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original in 1993. Her 2011 Kate Shugak mystery, Though Not Dead, received the 2012 Nero Award.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.

Elizabeth Jane Howard Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Elizabeth Jane Howard, born March 26, 1923.

Elizabeth Jane Howard was an English novelist. She wrote 12 novels including the best-selling series The Cazalet Chronicles.

Howard’s father was Major David Liddon Howard (1896–1958), a timber merchant who followed the work of his own father, Alexander Liddon Howard (1863-1946). Her mother was Katharine Margaret (‘Kit’) Somervell (1895–1975), a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and daughter of composer Sir Arthur Somervell. (Howard’s brother, Colin, lived with her and her third husband, Kingsley Amis, for 17 years.) Mostly educated at home, Howard briefly attended Francis Holland School before attending domestic-science college at Ebury Street and secretarial college in central London.

To read more, go to Wikipedia.

To check out “Poems in the Key of Carlin,” or to see what else Curious Penman has to offer, check out our Browse Books page.