The Ukrainian émigré Alexander Voloshin arrived in Los Angeles a year before Henri Coulette was born in the city on November 17, 1927. For much of the next three decades, until Voloshin’s death in 1960, the two men shared the same terrain, and it’s very likely that the young Coulette saw a good deal of […]
Simply Human: Henri Coulette and Alexander Voloshin
Category: Literature
Savages and Beasts

excerpt Despite all the atrocities the Indian children have experiencedthe system couldn’t change them, couldn’t mould them totheir ways. Why these kids can’t become like the proselytizingAnglos? What keeps them and sustains them and they remainIndians? How these savages know how to maintain their beliefsand way of life despite the efforts of the occupiers and […]
Savages and Beasts

Aaronovitch is back in form with this 10th instalment of the “Rivers of London” series. The series has been muddled, mediocre and meandering since Aaronivitch finished the “faceless man” part of it (the first seven books of the series, most of them very good), but this one flows well and is a fun book to […]
Book Review: Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

Born in 1948, William Gibson reshaped digital language through Neuromancer. By introducing “cyberspace” and vivid technological imagery, he gave English a way to describe networks, artificial intelligence, and virtual worlds, proving that fiction can anticipate reality—and even create the vocabulary needed to fully understand it.
Birth of William Gibson (1948– ) — The Novelist Who Gave the Digital Future Its Language

Born on March 10, 1810, Samuel Ferguson revived Irish myth within English literature by transforming ancient Celtic legends into poetic narratives. Drawing on early manuscripts and folklore, his work reintroduced heroic tales, landscapes, and cultural memory to English readers, helping lay the intellectual groundwork for the later Celtic Revival.
Birth of Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886) — The Scholar Who Brought Irish Myth into English Literature

Born on March 8, 1859, Kenneth Grahame shaped modern children’s literature with The Wind in the Willows. His lyrical pastoral prose turned animal tales into reflections on friendship, home, and the quiet beauty of the English countryside, blending gentle humor with philosophical calm that continues to influence storytelling today.
Birth of Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) – The Storyteller Who Turned the English Countryside into Myth
George Seferis – Collected Poems

THURSDAYI saw her die many timessometimes crying in my armssometimes in a stranger’s armssometimes alone, naked;in this way, she lived with me.Now I know, at last, that nothing exists furtherand I wait.If I grieve, it is my personal matterlike the feelings for simple things as theseand as they say we have gone beyond them;and yet […]
George Seferis – Collected Poems

Born on March 6, 1806, Elizabeth Barrett Browning expanded the emotional and intellectual range of Victorian English poetry. Through works like Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, she blended lyric passion with philosophical reflection, proving poetry could explore love, identity, and social justice with remarkable depth and rhetorical elegance.
Birth of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) — A Transformative Voice in Victorian Poetry
Green ~ A Poem by Paul Verlaine

The Beauty of Softness: Finding Peace in Paul Verlaine’s “Green” Green Paul Verlaine See, blossoms, branches, fruit, leaves I have brought, And then my heart that for you only sighs;With those white hands of yours, oh, tear it not, But let the poor gift prosper in your eyes. The dew upon my hair is still […]
Green ~ A Poem by Paul Verlaine

Born on March 1, 1913, Ralph Ellison reshaped the American novel through symbolic layering, jazz-inflected rhythm, and philosophical depth. In Invisible Man, he fused political urgency with introspective narration, expanding the language of identity and redefining who could stand at the center of American literary expression.
Birth of Ralph Ellison (1913–1994) – The Voice That Made America Confront Its Invisible Self