The Brazilian author PAULO COELHO was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.…
Thomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. In December 1941 he entered the Trappist A…
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion (called Garrison K…
Hanna Hurnard was a twentieth century Christian author, best known for her allegory Hinds' Feet on High Places. Hurnard was born in 1905 in Colchester, England to Quaker parents. She graduated from Rid…
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solita…
Gavin de Becker is an expert on the prediction and management of violence. He has served on President's Advisory Board at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Governor's Advisory Board at the Califo…
Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and interspiritual teacher. In 2020, she was honored on Watkins’ list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People…
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She also holds the position of visit…
Kevin Griffin is the author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps, the breakthrough book that established him as a leader in the mindful recovery movement. Since its publication, Kevi…
Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, wh…
Sufism inspired writings of Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi; these writings express the longing of the soul for union with the divine.
An American poet, psychoanalyst and post-trauma specialist who was raised in now nearly vanished oral and ethnic traditions. She is a first-generation American who grew up in a rural village, populati…
Pekka Hämäläinen is the Rhodes Professor of American History and Fellow of St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University. He has served as the principal investigator of a five-year project on nomadic e…
Lao Tzu (Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ; Wade-Giles: Laosi; also Laozi, Lao Tse, Lao Tu, Lao-Tsu, Laotze, Laosi, Lao Zi, Laocius, Lao Ce, and other variations) was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, b…
Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valua…
Novelist and poet Lang Leav was born in a refugee camp when her family were fleeing the Khmer Rouge Regime. She spent her formative years in Sydney, Australia, in the predominantly migrant town of Cab…
Marie Benedict is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Daughter of Egypt, The Queens of Crime, The Mitford Affair, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, The Only Woman in …
Jennae Cecelia is a bestselling author and poet, recognized for her books The Sun Will Rise and So Will We and Healing For No One But Me and the viral “I met my younger self for coffee” poem. Starting…
Deb Dana is a clinician and consultant specializing in working with complex trauma and Coordinator of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. She develope…
Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb was born in Yuba City, California and was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the Univ…