Today in Writing History May 13, 1944: Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin was born. Maupin wrote the novels over the course of nearly forty years, (1978-2014). He was one of the first writers to incorporate the AIDS epidemic into his novels.
Today in Writing History May 11, 1880: The Mussel Slough Tragedy occurred on this day in Hanford, California. It was a land between squatters and the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), one of the nation’s most powerful corporations. Former California governor, Leland Stanford, was president of SP. The conflict began as a picnic of settlers and their supporters. However, when word spread that the railroad was actively evicting settlers, a group of twenty left the picnic to confront them. Seven died in the confrontation. A federal Grand Jury indicted seventeen people and five were found guilty of interfering with a federal marshal. The newspapers seized on the event as an example of corporate greed and the excesses of capitalism. Several great historical novels were based on this incident. Frank Norris wrote The Octopus: A Story of California (1901), about the incident. W.C. Morrow’s 1882 novel Blood-Money was also about this tragedy. And May Merrill Miller wrote about it, as well, in her novel, First the Blade (1938).
Today in Writing History May 9, 1981: Nelson Algren, American novelist and short story writer died. His most famous book was “The Man With The Golden Arm,” which was made into a film in 1955. He was called the “bard of the down-and-outer” based on his numerous stories about the poor, beaten down and addicted. Algren was also called a “gut radical.” His heroes included Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow. He claims he never joined the Communist Party, but he participated in the John Reed Club and was an honorary co-chair of the “Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee.” The FBI surveilled him and had a 500-page dossier on him.
Today in Labor History May 9, 1907: Big Bill Haywood went on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. Clarence Darrow defended Haywood and got him acquitted. Steunenberg had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood had been framed by a Pinkerton agent provocateur named James McParland, the same man who infiltrated the Pennsylvania miners’ union in the 1870s and got 20 innocent men executed as Molly Maguires. You can read about that in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” which I hope to have out by end of summer.
Today in Writing History May 7, 1867: Polish author Wladyslaw Reymont was born. His best-known work is the award-winning four-volume novel Chłopi (The Peasants), which won him the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature. Also in 1924, he published his novel “Revolt,” about a rebellion of farm animals fighting for equality. However, the revolt quickly degenerates into bloody terror. It was a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution. Consequently, the Polish authorities banned it from 1945 to 1989. Reymont’s farm animal rebellion predated Orwell’s by 21 years.
Diana Corbett’s childhood was plagued by unceasing dreams of smoke and flames. The nightmares went away, until the noted travel writer’s first night on assignment in Louisiana … when they returned with a vengeance. Could the handsome Cajun, Amos Boudreaux, be the key to unlocking the secret of Bayou Fire?
Bayou Fire has received the InD'Tale Magazine Crowned Heart, the AuthorsDB Silver Medal for Cover Design, the Chill With a Book Readers' Award, and was long-listed for the 2022 Historical Fiction Company Book of the Year.
Today In Labor History May 1, 1923: Novelist Joseph Heller was born on this day. He published his most famous book, the anti-war satire, Catch-22, in 1961.
Today in labor history April 28, 1789: Fletcher Christian led a group of mutineers against the brutal Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty. Christian began the voyage as the captain’s mate, but Bligh appointed him acting Lieutenant during the voyage. The story of the voyage and mutiny was later retold by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall’s “Mutiny on the Bounty.” After their successful mutiny, Christian, 9 other mutineers, 6 Tahitian men and 11 Tahitian women, started a colony on the South Pacific island of Pitcairn. However, the Tahitians rebelled when the mutineers tried to enslave them and killed most of them. But not until after many of the Tahitian women became pregnant. The decedents of the mutineers continue to live there today. Bligh had previously served on the Resolution, as Master, under Captain Cook, on his second and third voyages to Hawaii. And he was present when the native Hawaiians killed Cook.
"She had gone too far into the unhappiness of the world to start all over again." —Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
This is an odd, engrossing, unpredictable drama that feels like it's taking place on multiple planes. Shades of Muriel Spark and Ali Smith but very much its own beast
Today in Labor History March 24, 1834: William Morris, British author, textile designer and revolutionary socialist was born on this date. He wrote the utopian novel “News From Nowhere” and founded the Socialist League in 1874. He was influenced by both Marxism and anarchism.
I've written one #romcom#novel so far, not yet published, and a few articles on #extremeProgramming which were published. I might be a better editor than a writer.
my literary heroes include Terry Pratchett #discworld and Theodore Sturgeon
#Introduction Greetings, Fediversians. Call me Gayle or Jen; I answer to both. I survive primarily on coffee & am known to roam virtual spaces rattling my chains. Past journo, community organizer & counselor; now political #poet. First #novel edited, in search of an #agent. Lifelong #guitar picker, urban #photographer, world #traveler temporarily grounded. #Cat slave, #tree-hugger, believer in the dignity of all beings. #ProDemocracy#activist & #resister. Stands w/ a pen. Welcomes new friends.