Bill Bryson is a bestselling American-British author known for his witty and accessible nonfiction books spanning travel, science, and language. He rose to prominence with Notes from a Small Island (1…
Sophocles (497/496 BC-406/405 BC), (Greek: Σοφοκλής; German: Sophokles, Russian: Софокл, French: Sophocle) was an ancient Greek tragedian, known as one of three from whom at least one …
John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors t…
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); …
Robert Gordon (b. 1961) is an American writer and filmmaker from Memphis, Tennessee. His work has focused on the American south—its music, art, and politics—to create an insider's portrait of his home…
Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts …
Daniel Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter whose work helped define the landscape of alternative comics and bring the medium into mainstream literary conv…
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born …
Noted American actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker Woody Allen, originally Allen Stewart Konigsberg explored the neuroses of the urban middle class in comedies of manners, such as Annie Hall (1977)…
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…
The Prince, book of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian political theorist, in 1513 describes an indifferent ruler to moral considerations with determination to achieve and to maintain power.
Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn and went to sea as a merchant marine while still in his teens. Laid low by lung disease, he was, after a decade of hospitalizations, written off as a goner and s…
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well…
David Peace was born in 1967 and grew up in Ossett, near Wakefield. He left Manchester Polytechnic in 1991, and went to Istanbul to teach English. In 1994 he took up a teaching post in Tokyo and now l…
People consider that Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь) founded realism in Russian literature. His works include The Overcoat (1842) and Dead Souls (1842).
John le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), was an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré had resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Grea…
Cassandra Peterson (born September 17, 1951) is an American actress best known for her on-screen horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles television statio…
Ram V (Ramnarayan Venkatesan) is an author and comic book writer from Mumbai, India. His comics career began in 2012 with the award-nominated Indian comic series, Aghori. A graduate of the City Univer…
Paul B. Preciado has become one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and sexuality. A professor of Political History of the Body, Gender Theory, and History of Performance at Paris VIII, he …
Joel has been the tambourine-playing frontman of The Brian Jonestown Massacre for the last thirty years. He's THAT good at it. The band was formed in 1990 and immediately established itself as not onl…
