Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Alfred Schneider, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, free-wheeling, and critical style of comedy which contained sa…
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…
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote The Neon…
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess …
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, …
David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Widely reg…
Budd Schulberg (1914–2009) was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist who is best remembered for the classic novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall, and the story On the Waterfront, whic…
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…
Sir James Paul McCartney MBE, known as Paul McCartney, is an English singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, poet, entrepreneur, painter, record producer, film producer, and animal-rights …
Judith Orloff, MD is a psychiatrist, an empath, and author of the recent book "The Genius of Empathy" (Foreword by the Dalai Lama) which offers powerful skills to tap into empathy as a daily healing p…
Ntozake Shange (pronounced En-toe-ZAHK-kay SHONG-gay) was an African-American playwright, performance artist, and writer who is best known for her Obie Award winning play for colored girls who have co…
Carol Anderson is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Professor Anderson’s research and teaching focus on public policy; particularly the ways that domestic…
Born in Ciechanow Poland, Ania has always been drawn to the darker, mysterious, and sometimes morbid sides of life. Her earliest childhood memory is of crawling through a hole in the chain link fence …
Steve-O is an American stunt performer and television personality. His entertainment career is mostly centered around his performance stunts on the American TV series Jackass and accompanying movies.
Jessica Hopper is a Chicago-based music critic and the author of The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic. She was formerly the Editorial Director at MTV News, and an editor at…
Chris Kattan is an American actor and comedian, best known for his work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, his role as Bob on the first four seasons of The Middle, for playing Doug Butabi in A N…
John Hamilton McWhorter (Professor McWhorter uses neither his title nor his middle initial as an author) is an American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Lite…
Dan Slepian is an award winning journalist at NBC News and a veteran producer of its signature newsmagazine, Dateline. Over more than two decades at NBC, Slepian has spearheaded dozens of documentarie…
