By Paula Becker | On May 16, 2018 | Updated August 1, 2026 | Comments (2)
Betty MacDonald (1907 – 1958) was an American author of humorous memoirs and children’s books. The Egg and I, her bestselling 1945 memoir of running a chicken farm in rural Washington State in the late 1920s, catapulted her to international fame.
Her Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children were also hugely successful. Exerpted by permission from Paula Becker’s biography Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I (University of Washington Press, 2016), here’s the story of how Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle came to the page and became a series. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 14, 2018 | Updated November 22, 2024 | Comments (0)
Relationships between brilliant writers were nearly always a tangle of complication and passion. Some couples preferred non-monogamous arrangements; others agreed that marriage was never to be part of the bargain. An intellectual bond was part of the attraction, and the glue that held these literary love affairs together.
Of the couples listed below, only the union of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning seemed like pure bliss. But even in their case, it was complicated. Her father was so dead-set against the marriage that he disinherited her. Read on for a capsule of some famed literary love affairs and marriages — truly, for better or worse. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On May 4, 2018 | Updated February 5, 2026 | Comments (0)
“Sweet Lorraine” is a (platonic) love letter and tribute to Lorraine Hansberry by her friend and colleague, James Baldwin. It opens her posthumous book of collected writings, To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969). Both were relatively young artists when they first met in the winter of 1958.
Lorraine, then 28, came to the Actors’ Studio where the stage version of Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room was being workshopped. He was then 34. Both were aware of one another’s work, and Lorraine would soon go on to defend her new friend Jimmy’s charge to introduce theater audiences to Black and queer themes. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On April 30, 2018 | Updated October 29, 2026 | Comments (0)
The Song of the Lark is a 1915 novel by Willa Cather, telling the story of Thea Kronborg and her desire to be a world-class singer. It is widely accepted that she based this character on the real-life opera singer Olive Fremstad.
Born into the family of a Swedish Methodist minister in a Colorado village, she has a voice, an ambition, and a native sense of the true and fine — qualities all in contrast with the cheapness and tawdriness she perceives around her.
From her girlhood, when her ambition takes hold, to her triumph as a prima donna at thirty, Thea’s whole life is focused around her supreme desire for artistic perfection. Willa Cather had already outlined this novel, having had an interest in opera.
Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 17, 2018 | Updated August 20, 2026 | Comments (0)
Though Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848), the British only lived to age thirty she left the classic novel Wuthering Heights and a collection of stunning poems as her literary legacy. Here we’ll explore the death of Emily Brontë as told by a 19th century biographer.
The novelist and poet, sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë, was the fifth child of Maria Branwell Brontë and Reverend Patrick Brontë. In many ways, Emily was a more enigmatic figure than her sisters. An 1885 article in the Chicago Tribune stated:
“Emily Brontë was perhaps the most original of the Brontë children in character; and it is thought by many that she was possessed of an even more striking genius than Charlotte. She was of a peculiarly reserved nature, and never during her life made any friend outside her family.” Read More→
Categories: 
Comments: