He was a French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris. He and Henri Cartier-Bresson were pioneers of photojournalism. He is renowned for his 1950 image Le baiser de l'hôte…
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu , known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (195…
Alessandro Baricco is an Italian writer, born at Torino in 1958. He's the author of several works, including the novels Lands of Glass (Selezione Campiello Award and Prix Médicis Étranger), Ocean Sea …
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, rea…
J. M. Coetzee is a South African writer, essayist, and translator, widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature. His works, often characterized by their austere pr…
Marjane Satrapi (Persian: مرجان ساتراپی) is an Iranian-born French contemporary graphic novellist, illustrator, animated film director, and children's book author. Apart from her native tongue Persian…
Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nur…
Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and…
Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to re…
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…
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the vis…
Michel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate) or 1956 on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To admirers he is a wr…
Amélie Nothomb, born Fabienne Claire Nothomb, was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on 9 July 1966, to Belgian diplomats. Although Nothomb claims to have been born in Japan, she actually began living in Japa…
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism, an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "st…
The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won…
Jon Olav Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black). His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and pu…
Tara Brach is a leading western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She has practiced and taught meditation for over 40 years, with an emphasis on vipassana (min…
PATTI SMITH is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has…
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior was a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in num…
Guadalupe Nettel (born 1973) is a Mexican writer. She was born in Mexico City and obtained a PhD in linguistics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She has published in sev…
German philologist and folklorist Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm in 1822 formulated Grimm's Law, the basis for much of modern comparative linguistics. With his brother Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859), he coll…
Claire Marin est professeure de philosophie en classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles et membre associé de l’ENS-Ulm. Ses recherches portent sur les épreuves de la vie. Elle est notamment l’auteure …
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tuto…
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Priz…
