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 Richard Russo
Richard Russo lives in coastal Maine with his wife and their two daughters. He has written five novles: Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody’s Fool, Straight Man and Empire Falls, and a collection of short stories, The Whore's Child. He won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Empire Falls. Salman Rushdie
Born in Bombay in 1947, Salman Rushdie is the author of six novels, including Grimus, Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and a volume of essays, Imaginary Homelands. His numerous literary prizes include the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children and the Whitbread Prize for The Satanic Verses. 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. Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer was born in Brookline Massachusetts in 1954. He worked simultaneously as a carpenter and a freelance journalist until 1983, when he quit carpentry. His first book was EIGER DREAMS, a collection of articles written for Outside and Smithsonian. The second book was INTO THE WILD, the non-fictional chronicles of Chris McCandless, who ventured into the Alaskan wilderness to seek liberation and never returned. UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN explores the dark side of extreme religious belief. 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. Anne Rice
Anne Rice was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University and is the author of twenty-one novels. Her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976 and has gone on to become one of the bestselling novels of all time. It was in Interview with the Vampire that Rice first introduced her vampire, the Vampire Lestat, to the world. Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon was born in Glen Cove, New York, in 1937. He is also the author of The Crying of Lot 49, V., Vineland, Slow Learner, and Mason & Dixon. Mario Puzo
The publication of The Godfather in March 1969 catapulted Mario Puzo into the front ranks of American authors. Reviewers hailed the book as "a staggering triumph" (Saturday Review), "big, turbulent, highly entertaining" (Newsweek), "remarkable" (Look), and "a voyeur's dream, a skillful fantasy of violent personal power" (New York Times). Winning readers by the millions, it stayed at or near the top of the New York Times bestseller lists for sixty-nine weeks. Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman is the acclaimed author of the His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. His other books for children and young adults include Count Karlstein and a trilogy of Victorian thrillers featuring Sally Lockhart. The Golden Compass, the first of Pullman's His Dark Materials triology, won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Annie Proulx
Annie Proulx is the author of the short-story collection Heart Songs and Other Stories and four novels: Postcards, The Shipping News, Accordion Crimes, and That Old Ace in the Hole. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner Award, she lives and writes in Wyoming. Walker Percy
Walker Percy (May 28, 1916 - May 10, 1990) was trained as a medical doctor but became an author after contracting tuberculosis in 1942. His works include: Lancelot, The Last Gentleman, The Moviegoer, Lost in the Cosmos, Love in the Ruins, The Thanatos Syndrome, The Message in the Bottle, Signposts in a Strange Land. Suzan-Lori Parks
SUZAN-LORI PARKS is a playwright and screenwriter whose plays include TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, FUCKING A, THE DEATH OF THE LAST BLACK MAN IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD, THE SINNERS PLACE, DEVOTEES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE, BETTING ON THE DUST COMMANDER, IMPERCEPTIBLE MUTABILITIES IN THE THIRD KINGDOM (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), THE AMERICA PLAY, VENUS (1996 Obie Award), and IN THE BLOOD. Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk’s novels are the bestselling Lullaby and Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, and Diary. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Chuck's last name is pronounced "Paula-nick." Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto. Ben Okri
Ben Okri is a Nigerian writer resident in London. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Booker Prize, and the Paris Review Aga Khan prize for fiction. He is visiting writer-in-residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include Flowers and Shadows, The Landscapes Within, Stars of the New Curfew, An African Elegy, The Famished Road, and Songs of Enchantment. 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. Garth Nix
Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Ragwitch, Sabriel, Shade's Children, Lirael, Abhorsen, The Seventh Tower Series, the Very Clever Baby series, Bill the Inventor, Black Bread the Pirate, and Serena and The Sea Serpent. V.S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature." Bharati Mukherjee
Mukherjee's earlier works, such as the The Tiger's Daughter and parts of Days and Nights in Calcutta, are her attempts to find her identity in her Indian heritage. The second phase of her writing, works such as Wife, the short stories in Darkness, an essay entitled "An Invisible Woman," and The Sorrow and the Terror, a joint effort with her husband. Her latest works include The Holder of the World, published in 1993, and Leave It to Me, published in 1997. Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Christopher Moore
Christopher Moore is the author of Practical Demonkeeping, Coyote Blue, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Lamb, and Fluke. His fiction is compelling and hilarious. Terry McMillan
Terry McMillan is the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of Mama, Disappearing Acts, Waiting to Exhale, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, (the last two of which have been turned into feature films). She is also the editor of Breaking the Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Her latest bestseller is A Day Late and a Dollar Short. Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy's fiction parallels his movement from the Southeast to the West--the first four novels being set in Tennessee, the last three in the Southwest and Mexico. The Orchard Keeper (1965) won the Faulkner Award for a first novel; it was followed by Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1973), Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian (1985), and All the Pretty Horses, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award for fiction in 1992. |
