Yann Martel is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies wor…
Anna Marie Quindlen is an American author, journalist, and opinion columnist. Her New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. She began her journalism care…
Darcey Steinke is an American author and educator known for her evocative novels and thoughtful nonfiction. She has written five novels, including Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, Jesus Saves, Mi…
Sue Monk Kidd was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia, a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel The Secret Life of Bees. She graduated from Texas Christian University i…
Anne Lamott is an author of several novels and works of non-fiction. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, her non-fiction works are largely autobiographical, with strong doses of self-deprecating humo…
Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for Fir…
Mark Oppenheimer is a freelance writer. He is a staff writer for the Christian Century and has written for many publications, including Harper’s, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Bosto…
James Martin, SJ is a Jesuit priest, writer, editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America, and consultor to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communication.
Lauren Groff was born in Cooperstown, N.Y. and grew up one block from the Baseball Hall of Fame. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. …
Valerie Bertinelli is the host of her own daytime series Valerie’s Home Cooking and co-hosts Kids Baking Championship on the Food Network. The two-time Golden Globe award-winning actress takes her fan…
Colm Tóibín FRSL, is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbi…
Maria Semple's first novel, This One is Mine, was set in Los Angeles, where she also wrote for television shows including Arrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen.
Born to non-farmers in a California farming community, Mac Barnett now lives near San Francisco. He's on the board of directors of 826LA, a nonprofit writing center for students in Los Angeles, and he…
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…
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s writing takes readers behind the scenes of major moments in pop culture history and examines the lasting impact that our favorite TV shows, music, and movies have on our s…
Known for her sardonic wit and her hysterically skewed outlook on life, Jenny Lawson has made millions of people question their own sanity, as they found themselves admitting that they, too, often won…
Lena Dunham is an American filmmaker and actress. She wrote and directed the independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), and is the creator and star of the HBO series Girls. In 2013, Dunham was named one …
Kate Bowler, PhD is a New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and a professor at Duke University. She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or …
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atla…
RACHEL KHONG is the author of the novels Real Americans, a New York Times bestseller, and Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. From 2011 to 2016, she was an editor …
Journalist Kate Murphy’s eclectic essays and articles for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Agence France-Presse, and Texas Monthly have been shared and commented on by milli…
Jennifer Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the book Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It. She is a frequent contributor to The Wall St…
Elizabeth Beller is a journalist and author of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, with over fifteen years of experi…