Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859)…
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343 - 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "fath…
Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and out…
Amy Tan (Chinese: 譚恩美; pinyin: Tán Ēnměi; born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose novels include The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daug…
Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer who is also an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Thin…
Anne Fadiman is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Frog (2026). Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Ang…
Best known works, including The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980), of American writer Maxine Hong Kingston combine elements of fiction and memoir.
Chang-rae Lee is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University. He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director of Princeton's Program…
David Henry Hwang (Chinese: 黃哲倫; pinyin: Huáng Zhélún; born August 11, 1957) is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.
Gene Luen Yang writes, and sometimes draws, comic books and graphic novels. As the Library of Congress’ fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, he advocates for the importance of read…
Lê Thi Diem Thúy left Vietnam on a boat with her father in 1978 and grew up in San Diego, California. In 1990, she moved to Massachusetts and enrolled in Hampshire College. After graduating in 1993, T…
Li-Young Lee is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His great-grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself empero…
Jade Snow Wong was born in San Francisco and brought up in a family that maintained traditional Chinese customs. Due to the high importance her family placed on education and her own desire to learn, …
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of “The Sympathizer,” awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His most recent book, “To Save and to Destroy,” explores…
Anna Burns (born 1962) is an Irish author. She was born in Belfast and moved to London in 1987. Her first novel, No Bones, is an account of a girl's life growing up in Belfast during the Troubles.
Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the United States to study to become a doctor, first attending the Univer…
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson was Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University, and is best known for his celebrated book Imagi…
Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian journalist, fiction writer, and a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Kanafani died at th…
