BAM Writes A Blog: January 19 Birthday Club

January 19 is my birthday, and it turns out I share it with a ridiculously awesome lineup.

We’re talking:

Dolly Parton (b. 1946)

A singer-songwriter, performer, and cultural figure with a prolific career spanning decades.

Known for:

Songs like Jolene and 9 to 5
Narrative songwriting rooted in class, labor, and dignity
Philanthropic work, including the Imagination Library

Her work combines clarity, generosity, and sharp social insight, balancing accessibility with enduring thematic depth.

Janis Joplin (1943–1970)

A groundbreaking blues-rock vocalist known for raw emotional expression and vocal intensity.

Associated with:

Big Brother and the Holding Company
The Kozmic Blues Band
Songs like Piece of My Heart and Cry Baby

Her performances foreground vulnerability and emotional risk, prioritizing authenticity over control or polish.

Katey Sagal (b. 1954)

An actress and musician known for portraying emotionally resilient women shaped by experience rather than idealism.

Notable roles include:

Married… with Children (Peggy Bundy)
Futurama (Leela)
Sons of Anarchy (Gemma Teller Morrow)

Her performances often center on endurance, wit, and hard-earned authority.

Dōgen (1200–1253)

A Zen monk and philosopher, and the founder of Sōtō Zen in Japan.

Best known for:

Shōbōgenzō (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye)
Essays on time (uji), practice, and language

His writing reframes enlightenment as lived practice, emphasizing repetition, attention, and presence in everyday action.

And then there were more writers:

Eden Robinson (b. 1968)

A Haisla and Heiltsuk novelist and short-story writer from Canada, Robinson is best known for the Trickster trilogy, beginning with Son of a Trickster.

Her work blends:

Indigenous identity
Dark humor
Intergenerational trauma
Myth woven into modern realism

Her voice is sharp, intimate, and deeply rooted in Pacific Northwest Indigenous life.

Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969)

One of the most respected contemporary literary voices writing about diaspora and memory.

Her books—Breath, Eyes, Memory, The Farming of Bones, Brother, I’m Dying—explore:

Haitian history and exile
Family, loss, and inherited trauma
Political violence and survival

Danticat’s prose is quietly devastating, emotionally precise, and deeply humane.

Julian Barnes (b. 1946)

A Booker Prize–winning novelist (The Sense of an Ending) and one of Britain’s most intellectually playful writers.

His work is known for:

Unreliable memory
Time and regret
The slipperiness of truth

Barnes writes novels that feel deceptively simple but linger long after you finish.

Margaret George (b. 1949)

A master of epic historical fiction, especially biographical novels told in immersive first-person voices.

Notable subjects include:

Henry VIII
Cleopatra
Mary, Queen of Scots
Helen of Troy

Her books are meticulously researched and emotionally grounded.

Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995)

One of the most influential psychological crime writers ever.

Creator of Tom Ripley, she revolutionized suspense by:

Centering morally ambiguous protagonists
Making empathy deeply uncomfortable
Removing clear lines between villain and hero

Her influence runs straight through modern noir, literary thrillers, and prestige crime TV.

Nina Bawden (1925–2012)

A beloved British author of both children’s and adult fiction.

She wrote with:

Psychological insight
Emotional realism
Respect for young readers’ intelligence

Carrie’s War remains a classic for its honest portrayal of childhood during wartime Britain.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

A poet, short-story writer, and critic whose work shaped modern psychological fiction.

Key contributions include:

Psychological horror and unreliable narrators
Early detective fiction
Poems such as The Raven

His stories focus on obsession, guilt, and mental collapse, locating meaning in psychological residue rather than external action.

That’s a stacked room. I’d show up early just to listen. Poe and I have so many things in common

that I should write a poem just about them.

_______________________________________________

Let me count the ways:

We arrived on the same day,

January nineteenth,

as if the calendar had a preference.

We share a middle name,

tucked quietly between first and last,

doing more work than it gets credit for.

We share the same tired eyes—

they’ve already seen what the room

is pretending not to show.

We build stories errily similarly:

voice first,

behavior second,

precision always.

Plot can will come, we promise.

We care about what lingers.

Not the bang,

moreso the echo.

Not the spectacle,

the stain it leaves behind.

We write under pressure

when the damage clarifies.

I wrote one hundred thirty-seven thousand words in a month.

He wrote like someone racing the dark.

We both carry haunted pasts—

instead of decoration,

as weather coats.

When language fails us,

we don’t explain.

We stage the scene

and let it breathe on its own.

So far, the world knows us through short stories,

tight spaces,

compressed truths,

nothing wasted.

And then there’s my name:

Bertram—

bright,

famous,

raven.

Some birds circle graves.

Some circle memory.

_______________________________________________

What gets me is how I really gel with these thinkers. They went for voice, aftermath, and whatever lingers once the big moment passes.

Poe didn’t care about jump scares. He cared about what happens to a mind once it can’t escape itself. His stories live in obsession, guilt, and the slow unraveling after the damage is done.

Patricia Highsmith did something just as unsettling in a quieter way. Tom Ripley survives moral collapse with disturbing ease and takes the reader along for the ride.

Julian Barnes keeps poking holes in memory until it stops pretending to be reliable. Edwidge Danticat writes with a restraint that somehow hits hard anyway. Eden Robinson mixes humor, myth, and pain, and no sanding anything down. Margaret George climbs inside history and lets ambition and regret feel alive. Nina Bawden trusted young readers with emotional truth long before anyone called that “brave.”

Then there’s the non-writers.

Janis Joplin sang without the need for an emotional safety net below her. Dolly Parton built an empire by being sharp, generous, funny, and painfully honest about class, work, and dignity, while people kept underestimating her. Katey Sagal made a career out of playing women who’ve been through it and came out tougher, wiser, and still standing.

And Dōgen? He fits better than I’d realized.

He wrote that rather than practice leading to some awakening. It is awakening. No finish line. No payoff episode. Just showing up, again and again, and paying attention to what’s actually happening.

I live in Japan at the moment, and those ideas feel less theoretical when surrounded by repetition, ritual, and the quiet dignity of doing things properly every day.

So yeah, January 19 is absolutely a birthday club.

It’s a club for people who: