Alexis de Tocqueville Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Alexis de Tocqueville, born July 29, 1805.

Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat, diplomat, sociologist, political scientist, political philosopher, and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution. In both, he analyzed the living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville’s travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.

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.

Beatrix Potter Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Beatrix Potter, born July 28, 1866.

Helen Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children’s books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was her first commercially published work in 1902. Her books, including 23 Tales, have sold more than 250 million copies. An entrepreneur, Potter was a pioneer of character merchandising. In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.

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.

Aldous Huxley Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Aldous Huxley, born July 26, 1894.

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including novels and non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature.

Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy, which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception, which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline.

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.

Elias Canetti Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Elias Canetti, born July 25, 1905.

Elias Canetti was a German-language writer, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic Jewish family. They moved to Manchester, England, but his father died in 1912, and his mother took her three sons back to continental Europe. They settled in Vienna.

Canetti moved to England in 1938 after the Anschluss to escape Nazi persecution. He became a British citizen in 1952. He is known as a modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, “for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power”. He is noted for his nonfiction book Crowds and Power, among other works.

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.

Alexandre Dumas Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Alexandre Dumas, born July 24, 1802.

Alexandre Dumas, also known as Alexandre Dumas père, was a French novelist and playwright.

His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Since the early 20th century, his novels have been adapted into nearly 200 films. Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages.[3] In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris.

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.

Elspeth Huxley Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Elspeth Huxley, born July 23, 1907.

Elspeth Joscelin Huxley was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote over 40 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.

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.

Write By The Rails Workshop

07/22/2024 ‑ Greetings one and all from Curious Penman. The Curious Penman staff were out and about in Old Town Manassas to attend a workshop held by Write By The Rails, a member organization of the Virginia Writers Club. This group event was held on Saturday, July 13, 2024 at 10 am at Bull Run Unitarian Universalist Church at 9350 Main St in Manassas, VA, and it was awesome! Mary Ellen Stone hosted the event. Six people joined the workshop and discussed poetry and fiction. This was a critique and support workshop, where writers brought samples of their work.

Curious Penman joined the group with a Knight Shade story, and listened to other interesting works; a story about the life of a Naval Academy graduate, a Christian poem, an existential poem about day lilies, and from newcomer Sheri Lynn, an equine’s expression on the joys of freedom! The next Write By The Rails workshop will be held at Bull Run Unitarian sometime in September.

Catch you on the flipside!

Akhil Sharma Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Akhil Sharma, born July 22, 1971.

Akhil Sharma is an Indian-American author and professor of creative writing. His first published novel An Obedient Father won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His second, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary 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.

Ernest Hemingway Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Ernest Hemingway, born July 21, 1899.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway’s works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.

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.