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Elizabeth Bishop
Bishop was born on February 8th, 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was basically
an orphan, because her dad died before she was one and her mother was committed to a mental hospital when she was 5.
Bishop has a lesbian relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares. Most of her published work occured between 1946 and 1979.
She died in 1979.
Theodore Roethke
Roethke was born on May 25th, 1908 in Michigan. He went to the University of Michigan
and Harvard University. In 1953, he published "The Waking". Also, in this year, he married Beatrice O'Connell.
He taught at many colleges, including one in the Pacific Northwest. He won the Pulitzer prize in 1954. Roethke
suffered a heart attack and died in 1963 in Washington.
Flannery O'Connor
Born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, O'Connor was the only child of a Catholic family.
She belonged to the Southern Gothic tradition which focused on the decaying South and its dammed people. At the age
of 21, she published her first short story, "The Geranium". In 1955, "Good Country People" was published. After
an abdominal operation reactivated the lupus, O'Connor died on August 3, 1964 at the age of 39.
Sylvia Plath
Plath was born in Boston in 1932. She attended Smith College. In 1955, she
married Ted Hughes and later gave birth to two children. Most of her writing happened just before her death, including
"Morning Song" in 1961. Plath committed suicide in 1963 by taking sleeping pills and gas inhalation.
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John Cheever
Cheever was born in 1912 in Quincy, Massachussetts. He wrote for MGM and magazines.
In 1941, Cheever married Mary Winternitz. He recieved a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1951, which allowed him to become a
full time writer. "The Swimmer" was published in 1964. John Cheever died in 1982.
Grace Paley
Paley was born on 1922 in the Bronx, New York. She entered Hunter College
when she was only 15 and later went to New York University. Grace Paley was married twice. First, she married
Jess Paley in 1942. They divorced and she got remarried in 1972 to Robert Nichols. She was the first person
to recieve the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit. "A Conservation with My Father" was published in 1974.
W.S. Merwin
Born in 1927 in New York City, Merwin attended Princeton University. He travelled
to France, England, and Spain. Some of his works include The Drunk in the Furnace (1960), The Lice (1967),
and The Compass Rower (1977).
Thomas Pynchon
Pynchon was born in 1937 in New York. He earned his B.A. in English from
Cornell University in 1958. "Entropy" was published in 1984. He hides from the media, so very little is known
about his life.
"We are all damned . . . but some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that
there’s nothing to see. It’s a kind of salvation."
~From "Good Country People" by O'Connor
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During this time period in world history:
- 1941- The US enters WWII after Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is attacked by the Japanesse.
- 1945- World War Two ends: the Allies celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 8th,
and over Japan on August 14. Total human casualties from the war exceed 50 million people.
- 1947- India gains independence from Britain's colonial domination;
later, millions die in riots following partition.
- 1954- In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas the Supreme Court rules unanimously that racial segregation
violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
- 1963- Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his famous, ``I have a dream'' speech Washington, D.C. . More
than 200,000 Americans march to demonstrate civil rights support.
- 1965- The war in Vietnam escalates, and American bombing of
North Vietnam begins. The Marine landing on March 8th represents the first deployment of
American troops to Vietnam and a full-scale offensive begins in June.
- 1969- Through NASA, the U.S. space program flies higher than anyone before. Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon and with the famous words ``One small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind.''
- 1974- Richard Nixon becomes the first United
States president to resign office. Nixon sought to avoid an impeachment trial stemming from lurid
Watergate discoveries. Vice-President Gerald
Ford is sworn in and grants Nixon a full pardon.
- 1989- The Berlin Wall falls, uniting it for the first time since WWII, and it ends the Cold War.
- 2001- Two hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers in NYC, while a third hits the pentagon in Washington D.C.
and a fourth crashes in a Pennsylvanian field. This starts a worldwide "War on Terrorism".
For more important world events, please visit http://www.historychannel.com
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