Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction fina…
Michael Chabon is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. Born in Washington, D.C., he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the Uni…
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…
Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been best-sellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold milli…
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…
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spe…
Cormac McCarthy was a highly acclaimed American novelist and screenwriter celebrated for his distinctive literary style, philosophical depth, and exploration of violence, morality, and the human condi…
Rick Steves is an American travel writer, television personality, and activist known for encouraging meaningful travel that emphasizes cultural immersion and thoughtful global citizenship. Born in Cal…
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature ("for impassioned writing wi…
Markus Zusak is the author of five books, including the international bestseller, The Book Thief, which spent more than a decade on the New York Times bestseller list, and is translated into more …
Kiran Desai is an Indian author who is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. She is the daughter of the noted author Anita Desai.
Camilla Townsend (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is professor of history at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). Her special interest is in the relations between indigenous peoples and Europeans throug…
Hisham Matar was born in New York City, where his father was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. When he was three years old, his family went back to Tripoli, Libya, where he spen…
For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain…
Henry Marsh read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University before studying medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in London. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1984 and …
PATTI SMITH is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has…
Juan Villoro is Mexico's preeminent novelist. Born in Mexico City in 1956, he is the author of half a dozen prize-winning novels and is also a journalist. In 2004, he received the Herralde Prize for h…
Miguel León-Portilla was a Mexican anthropologist and historian. He was one of the most reputable and commonly cited authorities on Aztec culture and literature in the pre-Columbian and colonial eras …
Escritor, editor y crítico literario nacido en México D. F. en 1969. Álvaro Enrigue ha pasado su vida entre el Distrito Federal y Washington D.C. Fue durante un tiempo profesor de Literatura en la Uni…
Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won t…
Erika Fatland is a Norwegian anthropologist and writer who has written multiple critically-acclaimed books, including Sovietistan and The Border. Fatland was born in Haugesund, Norway, in 1983, and st…
Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. His works are largely concerned with the themes of memory, loss of memory, and identity (both personal and collective) and decay (of …
Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won a National Award for Education Reporting as well as an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a 2021 Emerson Fellow at New America. He lives w…
Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents' migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salv…