John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". …
David Raymond Sedaris is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "Santaland Diaries". He publis…
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 …
Audre Lorde was a revolutionary Black feminist. Lorde's poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in bla…
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the fir…
Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon; born March 5, 1948) is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincol…
Carrie Fisher was an American actress, screenwriter and author, most famous for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. Fisher was the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and ac…
Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, wh…
David Brooks is one of the nation’s leading writers and commentators. He is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, a writer for The Atlantic, and appears regularly on PBS Newshour. He is the bests…
Eliot Stein is a journalist and editor at BBC Travel. His forthcoming book for St. Martin's Press, Custodians of Wonder, is inspired by a column he created for the BBC called Custom Made in which he p…
Irin Carmon is an Israeli-American journalist and commentator. She is a national reporter at MSNBC, covering women, politics, and culture for the website and on air. She is a Visiting Fellow in the Pr…
Maggie Smith is the author of the national bestseller Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Simon & Schuster 2020); Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017); The Well Speaks of Its Own…
TJ KLUNE is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (Into This River I Drown) and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinarie…
Samantha Shannon is the New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Bone Season series. From 2010 to 2013 she studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Her …
Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had clo…
Ione Skye made her film debut opposite Keanu Reeves in River’s Edge, followed by her iconic role as Diane Court in Say Anything. Skye has appeared in other notable film and television projects includi…
Ashley Herring Blake is a reader, writer, and mom to two boisterous boys. She holds a Master’s degree in teaching and loves coffee, arranging her books by color, and cold weather. She is the author of…
Jay Shetty is a storyteller, podcaster, and former monk. Shetty’s vision is to Make Wisdom Go Viral. He is on a mission to share the timeless wisdom of the world in an accessible, relevant, and practi…
Margareta Magnusson (1934-2026) was a Swedish artist and author. Her book Döstädning: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning became an international bestseller and was published in more than 30 coun…
Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly thirty years on death row for crimes he didn’t commit. Released in April 2015, Hinton now speaks widely on prison reform and the power of faith and forgiveness. He live…
Angela Chen is a science journalist, editor, and the author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, Electri…
