Author Profiles
Profiles Index - page 2
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is the renowned author of many novels, including Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, her first YA novel, and Small Avalanches, a collection of short stories. Her novel Blonde was a National Book Award nominee and New York Times best-seller. Her recent novels include Rape: A Love Story and The Tattooed Girl.
Mark Helprin
Mark Helprin is the author of A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, A Soldier of the Great War, Ellis Island and Other Stories, Winter's Tale and Memoir from an Antproof Case. He has been honored with the Jewish Book Award and the Prix de Rome for his works. He lives in upstate New York.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. He is the author of six novels, including The Remains of the Day, an international bestseller that won the Booker Prize and was adapted into an award-winning film, and most recently Never Let Me Go, a dystopian science fiction novel set in England during the late 1990s.
Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the bestsellers Tishomingo Blues, Get Shorty, Rum Punch, and most recently Mr. Paradise. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and The Big Bounce.
Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon was born in Northampton in 1962. After studying English at university, he spent some time working with children and adults with a variety of mental and physical handicaps. Mark’s first book, Gilbert’s Gobstopper was published in 1987. He won the Whitbread Novel Prize for his first novel, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is the author of the bestselling novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, as well as the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the editor of the short story collection Speaking with the Angel. In 1999, he was the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award. He lives in north London.
Saul Bellow
raised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose, Saul Bellow was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac lived a short and fast life between 1922 and 1969. Hailed for his 1957 novel, On the Road, based upon years of cross-country adventures with friend and muse Neal Cassady, Kerouac is a central figure in the Beat Generation. Along with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso (among others), the Beats were inspired by jazz and bop music and disaffected with the establishment. On the Road is unique in its "spontaneous prose" style, Kerouac's unique stream of conciousness.
Gabriel García Márquez
García Márquez is often considered the most famous of writers of magic realism. He got his start as a reporter for the Colombian daily El Espectador, and later worked as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York City. His most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has sold more than ten million copies.
John Le Carré
John le Carré was born in 1931 and lives in Cornwall, England. His eighteen novels have been translated into thirty-seven languages and include The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Russia House, Single & Single, and his most recent book, The Constant Gardener, all available from Pocket Books.
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat, which has been adapted as Sagwa, a PBS series for children. Tan was also the co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club, and her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin was born in 1929, in Berkeley, California. Winner of the National Book Award and the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award for Short Stories, she is a novelist, poet, and essayist, and she has written more than a hundred short stories, including her award-winning Wizard of Earthsea trilogy. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Martin Amis
Martin Amis (born August 25, 1949) is an English novelist and son of Kingsley Amis. Martin Amis is the bestselling author of several books, including London Fields, Money, The Information, and Experience. He lives in London.
Bruce Chatwin
British writer, Bruce Chatwin, is known for his novels and travel essays. His first book, In Patagonia (1977), is composed of a hundred short chapters relating Chatwin's personal adventures in Patagonia and stories of the people he met there. His book, The Songlines (1987) was inspired by Chatwin's travels among aborigine nomads. As a child, Chatwin created his first job as a guide to Shakespeare's monument and tomb. When he was fourteen, he traveled alone to Sweden.
Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins, maverick author of Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, Still Life with Woodpecker, and Villa Incognito. He is one of those rare writers who approach rock-star status, attracting SRO crowds at his personal appearances in Europe and Australia as well as in the United States. He lives primarily in the Seattle area.
Kathy Acker
Her work incorporates autobiography, self-confessed plagiarism and pornography, often dealing with the relations between power and language. Having never shied away from describing violence and sexuality in graphic detail, Kathy Acker's career has never been less than controversial.
Adeline Yen Mah
Adeline Yen Mah was born in Tianjin, China. Her mother died two weeks after her birth and Adeline was considered to be a source of bad luck by her family. Her father remarried a beautiful Eurasian woman one year later. She was half French and half Chinese and divided the Yen family into two different classes. Adeline's father, stepmother and their two children were the upper class, whereas Adeline and the four other step-children by the first wife were considered second class.
Eudora Welty
One of America's most admired authors, Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, which is still her home. She was educated locally and at Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She is the author of, among many other books, One Writer's Beginnings, The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, and The Optimist's Daughter.
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is the author of six previous works of fiction, most recently Glue. He lives in London. Trainspotting, his first book, reached the last ten for the Booker Prize and was made into a major film. He has also written the screenplay for the film of The Acid House.
Alice Walker
Recognized as one of the leading voices among black American women writers, Alice Walker has produced an acclaimed and varied body of work, including poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and criticism. Her writings portray the struggle of black people throughout history, and are praised for their insightful and riveting portraits of black life, in particular the experiences of black women in a sexist and racist society.
Anne Tyler
American novelist and short-story writer, whose keen ear for dialogue and life-like characters have won critical acclaim. Several of Tyler's novels have been set in Baltimore and focus on middle-class families, their secrets, ambitions, dreams, and crises. Among Tyler's best-known books is The Accidental Tourist (1985), which was made into a successful film, and the Pulitzer Prize winner Breathing Lessons (1988).
J.R.R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892 in South Africa. Tolkien was educated and taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. Tolkien's works include The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Simarillion, which are both available on audio from Random House.
Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; and London Orbital, all available from Granta Books. He lives in Hackney, east London.
Carol Shields
Carol Shields is the author of ten novels and two collections of short stories. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the Orange Prize for Larry's Party. Born and brought up in Chicago, Carol Shields has lived in Canada since 1957.
Alice Sebold
Alice Sebold is the author of The Lovely Bones and the memoir Lucky. She has been chosen by the Village Voice as a Writer on the Verge and has written for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. She lives in California with her husband, Glen David