Ambrose Bierce Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Ambrose Bierce, born June 24, 1842.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book The Devil’s Dictionary was named one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has been described as “one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature”, and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.

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 Akhmatova Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Anna Akhmatova, born June 23, 1889.

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian poet, one of the most significant of the 20th century. She reappeared as a voice of Russian poetry during World War II. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965 and received the second-most (three) nominations for the award the following year.

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.

Françoise Sagan Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Françoise Sagan, born June 21, 1935.

Françoise Sagan was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Her best-known novel was her first, Bonjour Tristesse, which was written when she was a teenager.

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 Laetitia Barbauld Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Anna Laetitia Barbauld, born June 20, 1743.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children’s literature. A prominent member of the Blue Stockings Society and a “woman of letters” who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career that spanned more than half a century.

She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy and an innovative writer of works for children. Her primers provided a model for more than a century. Her essays showed it was possible for a woman to be engaged in the public sphere; other women authors such as Elizabeth Benger emulated her. Barbauld’s literary career spanned numerous periods in British literary history: her work promoted the values of the enlightenment and of sensibility, while her poetry made a founding contribution to the development of British Romanticism.

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

06/08/2024 – 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 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. Nine people joined the workshop and discussed poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. This was a critique and support workshop, where writers brought samples of their work.

After laying down the ground rules for the workshop, no dominating the conversation, make sure your input is constructive and don’t be needlessly negative or positive, give specifics, etc. Curious Penman joined the fiction group with a sample of an upcoming Knight Shade Files story, and listened to other ineresting works; a short story about the day in the life of a Naval Academy graduate, a Christian thriller, and an epic Irish fantasy tale! Subsequent Write By The Rails workshops will be held at Bull Run Unitarian every first Saturday at 10 am, the next one slated for Saturday, July 6, 2024.

Catch you on the flipside!

Alexander Pushkin Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Alexander Pushkin, born June 6, 1799.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, as well as the founder of modern Russian literature.

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.

Allen Ginsberg Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Allen Ginsberg, born June 3, 1926.

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.

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.

Colm Tóibín Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to Colm Tóibín, born May 30, 1955.

Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.

His first novel, The South, was published in 1990. The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Master (a fictionalised version of the inner life of Henry James) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award, securing for Toíbín a bounty of thousands of euro as it is one of the richest literary awards in the world. Nora Webster won the Hawthornden Prize, whilst The Magician (a fictionalised version of the life of Thomas Mann) won the Folio Prize. His fellow artists elected him to Aosdána and he won the biennial “UK and Ireland Nobel” David Cohen Prize in 2021.

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.

Spilled Ink VA

05/29/2024 – Hello and Happy Summer from Curious Penman! Spilled In VA was held on Friday, May 24, 2024 at Jirani Coffeehouse at 9425 West St in Manassas VA at 6 pm, and it was a blast! Curious Penman and the host of Happy Hour Café were among those in attendance. Curious Penman and the host of Happy Hour Café were among those in attendance. Curious Penman read excerpts from an upcoming book in the Knight Shade series to be published later this year. Jirani Coffeehouse is a regular hub of writing activity during fourth weekends, with Happy Hour Café moving to Jirani from 4-6pm every fourth Friday, followed by Spilled Ink VA from 6-9pm. Happy Hour Café is a place for aspiring writers to meet and discuss work, accompanied by exercises to encourage creativity (Bring pen and paper). Spilled Ink VA is an open mic venue for new and established writers to road test new material in front of a built-in audience. And beginning in June, the Java Press Book Club will host monthly get together venues at Jirani every Fourth Saturday at 12:45 pm! If you’re looking to grow your writing skills, meet fellow scribblers, or just see what there is to offer, be at Jirani Coffeehouse every Fourth Friday at 4 pm and every Fourth Saturday at 12:45 pm!. Catch you on the flipside!

André Brink Biobite

Today’s Happy Birthday shout out goes to André Brink, born May 29, 1935.

André Philippus Brink was a South African novelist, essayist and poet. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and taught English at the University of Cape Town.

In the 1960s Brink, Ingrid Jonker, Etienne Leroux and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the significant Afrikaans dissident intellectual and literary movement known as Die Sestigers (“The Sixty-ers”). These writers sought to expose the Afrikaner people to world literature, to use the Afrikaans language to speak out against the extreme Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist National Party-controlled government, and also to introduce literary modernism, postmodernist literature, magic realism and other global trends into Afrikaans literature.

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.