I’m sure in the radio version, when it ends, rather than starts, with a poem, it’s not quite so depressing or jarring, but here’s how today’s Writer’s Almanac ends in the e-mail version:
Although for a time [Zora Neale Hurston] was the most prolific and most famous black woman writer in America, interest in her work faded away in the 1950s, and so did her money. She worked at odd jobs for the next ten years, writing a few magazine articles every now and again. Her death in 1960 in a welfare home went largely unnoticed and she was buried in an unmarked grave.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Yes, you too can die penniless, unnoticed and unremarked, even if you’ve had great early success! Yea, go writers!
I think I still have a copy of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God that I think I was supposed to have read for a class but never did. I really need to remedy that.
I’m planning on dying penniless and unnoticed, because I’m spending all my money now, having fun and living it up! Woohoo! This round’s on me!!