Member Spotlight

The Thurber House

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About The Thurber House 

 

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Thurber House (the home of humorist, author, and New Yorker cartoonist James Thurber) is a non-profit literary center and living museum located near downtown Columbus. Located next door is Thurber Center, a multi-purpose space to host retreats, events, and meetings that is available for rent. 

 

Each year, Thurber House brings in nationally recognized authors for the Evenings With Authors series, and celebrates Ohio authors during the annual Summer Literary Picnics series. The Evenings With Authors events will feature romance, suspense, thriller, current events and more - a mixture to please anyone who enjoys good books and interesting authors. See the full schedule here.

 

Thurber House programs also include the Thurber Prize for American Humor, the only such award given for humor writing in the country; adult writing workshops; a month-long residency for a children's writer; and a variety of creative writing programs for those pre-school to grade 12 that run year-round, including the beloved Summer Writing Camp. The House itself is a living museum open daily for tours.

 

Interesting facts about Thurber House you might not know:

 

  • Since Thurber House opened in 1984, 416 authors have shared their work with our audiences, and of those, 55 lived in the third floor apartment as part of our writer in residence program.
  • Over the past twenty years, more than 5,000 children learned the joy of creative writing through writing classes and summer camps at Thurber House.
  • Ghostly occurrences happen occasionally as proved by the Ghost Hunters episode, Time to Get Touched, which aired on the SyFy channel in October 2010.
  • Each year over 1,000 people visit Thurber House from almost every state including Hawaii and Alaska, plus international visitors from as far away as Russia, South Africa, Korea, India, Norway, and the United Kingdom to name a few.

 

Interesting facts about James Thurber you might not know:

  • He was born in a house on Parsons Avenue on December 8, 1894.
  • He was the second of three boys.  William was his older brother and Robert was his younger brother though he used different names for his brothers in the stories he wrote.
  • Two of his stories, The Night the Ghost Got In and The Night the Bed Fell, were based on events that actually happened at 77 Jefferson Ave. 

           

Thurber House is open for tours daily from 1 -4 pm.