Birthdays: Joseph P. Lash (1909), Dan Jenkins (1929), Leon Litwack (1929), David H. Fisher (1935), David Macaulay (1946), Elizabeth Berg (1948), T.C. Boyle (1948), George Saunders (1958), Ann Patchett (1963)
Joseph Lash won the National Book Award and Pulitzer for Biography for his works on Eleanor Roosevelt.
Leon Litwack won an American Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for History for “Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery”
David H. Fisher won the 2005 Pulitzer for History for “Washington’s Crossing”
Quotes: “I’ve loved books and reading from the time my mother began reading to me, and I’ve loved writing ever since I could hold a pencil.” – Elizabeth Berg
“I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.” – Ann Patchett
“Making books is hard work. Some books are, of course, more demanding than others.” – David Macaulay
“But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it.” – T.C. Boyle
“Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature.” – George Saunders
Tip: A rejection is not personal. As in The Godfather, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” And that’s what a rejection is. It’s a business decision by a publisher who doesn’t think they can work with your manuscript. It’s not you.
Jumpstart: If someone had asked her to predict what would happen that day, she probably wouldn’t have guessed that it involved the destruction of the world by strange supernatural forces, and that she was now on her way to fight them. How had this happened to her?
Sparkling Book Reviews 