Douglas Hofstadter Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Douglas Hofstadter, born February 15, 1945.

Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, strange loops, artificial intelligence, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

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.

ScribbleCon ’24

02/14/2024 ‑ Greetings one and all from Curious Penman! It was that time of the year again, where local writers, poets, and storytellers get together and share their passion with interested participants at ScribbleCon, a writing event that welcomes students of all levels and anyone who loves writing. ScribbleCon ’24 was held at Benton Middle School on Saturday, February 10, 2024, and it was a blast!

The keynote speaker, Maryel Stone, opened the event with a talk on “Strong Female Characters,” Curious Penman brought back his crime fiction workshop, “Creative Crimeology: Fun with Fictional Felonies,” John Dutton of Spilled Ink VA presented a workshop on how to write horror fiction with “Let’s Talk Nightmares,” and Andrea Yarbough gave conference goers something to chew on with her workshop “Table Tales: The Art of Food Narrative,” just to name a few of the 18 learning experiences to be had. ScribbleCon also had tables for local authors to promote and sell their literary wares during the lunch break. The event closed with Spilled Ink Jr., where kids could take the stage and share their stories with a ready-made audience.

We here at Curious Penman certainly look forward to next year!

#WriteTheWrongsforCrimeFiction!

Claire Cook Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Claire Cook, born February 14, 1955

Claire Cook is an American writer and public speaker.

Claire Cook is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestselling author of 21 books with the overarching theme of reinvention for 40-to-forever women. After teaching school for sixteen years, she wrote her first novel, Ready to Fall, in her minivan outside her daughter’s swim practice when she was 45 years old. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the film adaptation of her second novel, Must Love Dogs, which was made into a major motion picture starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. In 2014, she started her own publishing company, Marshbury Beach Books. Cook’s first non-fiction book, Never Too Late: Your Roadmap to Reinvention (Without Getting Lost Along the Way), shares her journey and tips for midlife women reinventing their lives. Her books have been translated into 14 languages.

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.

Eleanor Farjeon Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Eleanor Farjeon, born February 13, 1881.

Eleanor Farjeon was an English author of children’s stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire.

Several of her works had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Some of her correspondence has also been published. She won many literary awards and the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children’s literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children’s Book Circle, a society of publishers. She was the sister of thriller writer Joseph Jefferson Farjeon.

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 Meredith Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to George Meredith, born February 12, 1828.

George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel briefly scandalized Victorian literary circles. Of his later novels, the most enduring is The Egoist, though in his lifetime his greatest success was Diana of the Crossways. His novels were innovative in their attention to characters’ psychology, and also portrayed social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity; Oscar Wilde likened it to “chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning”.[1] Meredith was an encourager of other novelists, as well as an influence on them; among those to benefit were Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Meredith was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.

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.

Gordon Lish Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Gordon Lish, born February 11, 1934.

Gordon Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of the novelist Atticus Lish.

Lish was raised in Hewlett, New York, on Long Island; his father was the founder and primary partner in Lish Brothers, a millinery firm. During his formative years, he suffered from extreme psoriasis and was often ostracized by his peers.

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.

Bertolt Brecht Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Bertolt Brecht, born February 10, 1898.

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call “dialectical theatre”) and the Verfremdungseffekt.

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.

Alice Walker Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Alice Walker, born February 9, 1944.

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.

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 Bishop Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Elizabeth Bishop, born February 8, 1911.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps “the most purely gifted poet 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.

Charles Dickens Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Charles Dickens, born February 7, 1812.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, for education, and for other social reforms.

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.