Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and En…
Robert Gordon Wasson was an American author, ethnomycologist, and a Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co. Wasson spent most of his career is banking in his position at J.P. Morgan. L…
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle…
Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a fictionalised biography of Jesus. I…
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor whose literary work has had a profound impact on how the world understands the Holocaust and its aftermath. Born in Turin in 19…
Albert Hofmann (January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008) was a Swiss scientist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide…
Terence Kemp McKenna was a writer, philosopher, psychonaut and ethnobotanist. He was noted for his knowledge of the use of psychedelic, plant-based entheogens, and subjects ranging from shamanism, the…
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…
Esther Perel is recognized as one of the world’s most original and insightful voices on personal and professional relationships. She is the best-selling author of Mating in Captivity Unlocking Erotic …
Darkness at Noon (1940), novel of Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler, portrays his disillusionment with Communism; his nonfiction works include The Sleepwalkers (1959) and The Gh…
Henning Mankell was an internationally known Swedish crime writer, children's author and playwright. He was best known for his literary character Kurt Wallander.
Timothy Francis Leary was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, modern pioneer and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use, and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into sp…
Michael McDowell is a prolific horror writer who has distinguished himself with a varied body of work within the genre. He was born in Enterprise, Alabama, in 1950 and died of AIDS-related illness in …
Eugenia Bone, a veteran food writer who has published in many national magazines and newspapers, is also a cookbook author. She has contributed to many cookbooks and a few literary journals, been nomi…
Mark Fisher (1968 – 2017) was a co-founder of Zero Books and Repeater Books. His blog, k-punk, defined critical writing for a generation. He wrote three books, Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life an…
Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses.
Rutger Bregman (born April 26, 1988) is a Dutch historian and author. His books Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) and Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World (2017) were both Sunday Ti…
David Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England, raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature follow…
I figured this bio was looking a little cobwebby, so here to update it a bit (January 2026). What's changed in the decade since I wrote my initial bio? Mmmm, not a lot. I still enjoy b…
Cassandra Khaw is an award-winning game writer. Their recent novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth was a British Fantasy, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Bram Stoker Award finalist. Their debut collect…
Merlin is the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Merlin received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underg…
David John Nutt is an English neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs that affect the brain and conditions such as addiction, anxiety, and sleep. He is the chairman of Drug Sci…