Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and nonfiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including hi…
Amy Tan (Chinese: 譚恩美; pinyin: Tán Ēnměi; born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose novels include The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daug…
Mary Roach is a science author who specializes in the bizarre and offbeat; with a body of work ranging from deep-dives on the history of human cadavers to the science of the human anatomy during warfa…
In 1934, scientist Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. After earning bachelor and master's degrees at Cornell, Sagan earned a double doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1960. He became profess…
Daron Acemoglu is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2005 he won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the best econom…
Judy Blume spent her childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, making up stories inside her head. She has spent her adult years in many places doing the same thing, only now she writes her stories down on p…
Jane Jacobs, OC, O.Ont (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006) was an American-born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Dea…
Kenneth Wayne Jennings III holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! Jennings won 74 games before he was defeated by challenger Nancy Zerg on his 75th …
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Great Neck, New York, I grew up hearing stories that my immigrant Jewish grandparents told about the “old country” (Russia) that they left at the turn of the last centur…
DR. ERIC H. CLINE is the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington …
Alafair Burke is the New York Times, Edgar-nominated author of fourteen crime novels, including The Ex, The Wife, The Better Sister, and the forthcoming Find Me. She is also the co-author of several n…
Nancy Isenberg is the author of New York Times bestseller White Trash, and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography and won the Oklahoma Bo…
Mark Fisher (1968 – 2017) was a co-founder of Zero Books and Repeater Books. His blog, k-punk, defined critical writing for a generation. He wrote three books, Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life an…
Hillary Jordan is the author of two novels: MUDBOUND and WHEN SHE WOKE, as well as the digital short "Aftermirth," all published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Sloane Crosley is the author of the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp, as well as three books of essays collections, most recently Look Alive Out There and the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told Th…
Lena Dunham is an American filmmaker and actress. She wrote and directed the independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), and is the creator and star of the HBO series Girls. In 2013, Dunham was named one …
Nicholas Day is the author of The Mona Lisa Vanishes, illustrated by Brett Helquist, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction; A World Without Summer, i…
Kyle Prue is an award winning author, actor and comedian. Kyle wrote The Sparks: Book One of the Feud Trilogy when he was just 16 years old. Kyle spent a gap year before college on a national book tou…
Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer with a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA from Columbia University. She has been reporting on the criminal legal system for a decade, with a focus on the p…
William J. Barber II is an American Protestant minister and political activist. He is a member of the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the c…
Jennifer Howard is a writer and journalist and the author of CLUTTER: AN UNTIDY HISTORY, which Kirkus Reviews called "quick-witted and insightful... A keen assessment of one of society’s secret shames…
A native of Spain, Virginia Feito was raised in Madrid and Paris, and studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London. She worked as a copywriter until she quit to write her debut novel. …
Antonia Hylton is the author of MADNESS: Race and Insanity in Jim Crow Asylum. She’s a Peabody and two-time Emmy award-winning Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC and the cohost of the hit podcasts S…