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…
Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in…
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and nonfiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including hi…
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company execut…
Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, my…
Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright, best known for The Woman in White (1860), an early sensation novel, and The Moonstone (1868), a pioneering work of detective fiction. Born to lan…
COLSON WHITEHEAD is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, for The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad…
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…
James Mallahan Cain (July 1, 1892–October 27, 1977) was an American journalist and novelist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hard-boiled school of …
Walter Mosley (b. 1952) is the author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, as well as numerous other works, from literary fiction and science fiction to a young adult novel and po…
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist…
Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) was one of the most prolific and talented authors of American crime fiction. He began his career in the late 1950's, churning out novels for pulp houses—often writing as…
Sidney Lumet was an Academy Award-winning American film director, with over 50 films to his name, including the critically acclaimed 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Netw…
Dorothy B. Hughes (1904–1993) was a mystery author and literary critic. Born in Kansas City, she studied at Columbia University, and won an award from the Yale Series of Younger Poets for her first bo…
Winifred Mary Beard (born 1 January 1955) is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and is a fellow of Newnham College. She is the Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and a…
His novel Measuring the World (German: Die Vermessung der Welt) was translated into more than forty languages. Awards his work has received include the Cand…
Tom Gauld is a cartoonist and illustrator. He draws weekly cartoons for the Guardian newspaper and New Scientist magazine. He has created eight covers for the New Yorker and a number of comic books. H…
Alfredo James Pacino is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, Tony-, BAFTA-, Emmy- and SAG award-winning American film and stage actor and director, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most in…
Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post a…
Michael Benson is a journalist and maker of documentary films, including the award-winning Predictions of Fire (1995). His work has been published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Smithsonia…
Claire’s first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in January, 2011. It will be published simultaneously in the UK by Bloomsbury.
Robert Phillip Kolker, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, taught cinema studies for almost 50 years. He is author of A Cinema of Loneliness, The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitc…
