Washington

LitStack Review: The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby

The Pink Suit Nicole Mary Kelby Little, Brown and Company Publication Date: April 29, 2014 ISBN 978-0-316-23565-5 Few garments have come to define a moment in history as the pink Chanel suit that Jackie Kennedy wore on that fateful November day in 1963. That bright suit and its accompanying pillbox […]

Edgar Allan Poe House Reopens In Baltimore

From THP: Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake took a swig of cognac along with Kristen Harbeson, the president of the nonprofit Poe Baltimore. The two then exchanged a stuffed raven. The occasion was the Saturday reopening of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, which […]

Birthdays

On this day, May 17, in 1939, Gary Paulsen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of numerous YA coming of age/wilderness tales (Hatchet, Escape from Fire Mountain, Dogsong) didn’t meet his own father, a career military officer, until he and his mother moved to the Philippines when he was seven years old (they returned to the US two years later). At 14 he ran away to join the carnival to escape his alcoholic parents; he struggled himself with alcoholism but simplified his life to keep his demons at bay. In 1983, at age 44, he and his team of dogs ran the 1,150 mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Alaska which he wrote about in the gripping Winterdance; he later had to abandon the sport due to heart issues. Today, he turns 82.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.