births
March 5, 1908
Irving Fiske, American author and playwright (died 1990)
Irving Fiske
Irving L. Fiske was an American playwright, writer, and public speaker. He worked for the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, where he was a writer and rewrite man on The WPA Guide to New York City, in print today. He corresponded with George Bernard Shaw, wrote an article now considered a classic, "Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake," and translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into Modern English. He and his wife Barbara Fiske Calhoun co-founded the artist's retreat and intentional community Quarry Hill Creative Center, on the Fiske family property, in Rochester, Vermont.