Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean-American novelist. Allende, who writes in the "magic realism" tradition, is considered one of the first successful women novelists in Latin America. She has written n…
Novelist Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959. She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing pro…
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, familiarly known as "Gabo" in his native country, was considere…
Novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.
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…
Greg Grandin is the author of Fordlandia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A Professor of History at New York University, Grandin…
Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and …
Domitila Barrios de Chungara was long-time social activist, union leader, feminist, revolutionary, and national heroine. She is best known as the miner’s wife who led a hunger strike in 1978 that brou…
From the introduction to Lieutenant Nun by translator Michele Stepto: "She gives 1585 as the year of her birth, though records in San Sebastian indicate she was baptized in 1592. * * * Sometime betwee…
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems and LAST SEXT. He…