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, (4 April 1914 -3 March 1996) known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker.
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a Franco-Belgian playwright, short story writer and novelist, as well as a film director. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world.
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…
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…
William Blake (November 28, 1757 - August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in …
Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary mov…
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…
Ágota Kristóf was a Hungarian writer, who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. Kristof received the European prize for French literature for The Notebook (1986). She won the 2001 Gottfried Keller…
Emmanuel Carrère is a French author, screenwriter, and director. He is the son of Louis Carrère d'Encausse and French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse.
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…
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…
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…