Peter Henry Elbow was an American academic who was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also directed the Writing Program from 1996 until 2000. As a scholar whose…
Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. Didion's career began in the 1950…
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternativel…
James N. Frey is an American novelist and acclaimed writing teacher, best known for his influential guide How to Write a Damn Good Novel. He has authored both fiction and non-fiction, including thrill…
Melody Beattie was an American self-help author best known for her groundbreaking work on codependency. Born in 1948 in Minnesota, she endured a traumatic childhood marked by abuse and early substance…
Philip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound phi…
Lloyd Chudley Alexander was an influential American author of more than forty books, mostly fantasy novels for children and adolescents, as well as several adult books. His most famous contribution to…
bell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender…
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Informati…
Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and femin…
Natalie Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for book…
By many accounts, Roy Peter Clark is America's writing coach, a teacher devoted to creating a nation of writers. A Google search on his name reveals an astonishing web of influence, not just in the Un…
Kamo no Chōmei (鴨 長明?, 1153 or 1155–1216) was a Japanese author, poet (in the waka form), and essayist. He witnessed a series of natural and social disasters, and, having lost his political backing, w…
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story, …
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics col…
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Ox…
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges…
Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received m…
Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and Rejection. He has written for The Paris Review, N+1, The New York Times, VICE, WIRED, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and others. He has recei…
Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石), born Natsume Kinnosuke (夏目 金之助), was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a …
