Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including The Tree Where Man Was Born, The Snow Leopard. His fiction includes At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which was nominated for a National Book Award, Far Tortuga, and the Everglades trilogy, which includes his most recent book, Bone by Bone.
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. 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. 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. Harper Lee
Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, where she attended local schools and the University of Alabama. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, three honarary degrees, and many other literary awards for her one novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." 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. Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver's nine published books include novels, collections of short stories, poetry, essays, and an oral history. Her novel, The Poisonwood Bible, remained on bestseller lists for more than a year and won literary awards at home and abroad. Her latest book is a novel: Prodigal Summer. Her work has also appeared in numerous literary anthologies and periodicals. Stephen King
Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. He made his first professional short story sale in 1967 to Startling Mystery Stories. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published over 40 books and has become one of the world's most successful writers. Sue Monk Kidd
[br]Sue Monk Kidd, author of the highly acclaimed memoirs The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and When the Heart Waits, has won a Poets & Writers award, a Katherine Anne Porter Award, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. The Secret Life of Bees was nominated for the prestigious Orange Prize for fiction in England. Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey was born in 1935 and grew up in Oregon. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, his first novel, was published in 1962. His second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, followed in 1964. His other books include Kesey's Garage Sale, Demon Box, Caverns (with O. U. Levon), The Further Inquiry, Sailor Song, and Last Go Round (with Ken Babbs). Ken Kesey died on November 10, 2001. Erica Jong
Erica Jong is the author of eight novels including Fear of Flying; Fanny, Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones; Shylock's Daughter (formerly titled Serenissima); Inventing Memory, a story of mothers and daughters, and the new novel Sappho's Leap. J.A. Jance
New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance was born in South Dakota, brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, and now lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. 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 four previous novels, including The Remains of the Day, an international bestseller that won the Booker Prize and was adapted into an award-winning film. John Irving
John Winslow Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. He is the author of nine novels, among them The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Son of the Circus, and The Fourth Hand. Mr. Irving is married and has three sons. He lives in Toronto and in southern Vermont. Yu Hua
Yu Hua was born in 1960 in Hangzhou, the son of medical doctors destined to enter a career in dentistry. Constrained by that profession’s rigidity and unable to quell a need to create, Yu Hua started writing in 1983. Since that time he has published three novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. 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. Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen turned his hand to fiction in the early eighties. His first novel, Tourist Season,was published in 1986 and named "one of the ten best destination reads of all time" by GQ Magazine. He is the author of five other best-selling novels, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Hoot and Basket Case. Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1960. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was in 1993. It has been translated into fifteen languages and made into a feature film. Middlesex, his second novel, met with similar acclaim when published in 2002. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, The Gettysburg Review and Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists." 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. Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller began his writing career as the author of short stories but won immediate acclaim with Catch-22. A protest novel underscored with dark humor, Catch-22 satirizes the horrors of war and the power of modern society, especially bureaucratic institutions, to destroy the human spirit. Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzard's novels are The Evening of the Holiday (1966), The Bay of Noon (1970), The Transit of Venus (1981)and The Great Fire (2003). She is also the author of two collections of short fiction, Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories (1963) and People in Glass Houses (1967). Her nonfiction works include Defeat of an Ideal (1973), Countenance of Truth (1990), and the memoir Greene on Capri (2000). William Least Heat-Moon
illiam Trogdon, who writes under the name of William Least Heat-Moon, was born of English-Irish-Osage ancestry in Kansas City, Missouri. He holds a bachelor's degree in photojournalism and a doctorate in English from the University of Missouri. He is the author of Blue Highways; Prairyerth, an epic evocation of the American tallgrass prairie country; and the forthcoming River-Horse, an account of his travels along America's interior waterways. 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. John Grisham
John Grisham began writing as a hobby while an attorney in Mississippi. His second book, The Firm, was a bestseller that was made into a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise. John Grisham's books include The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Brethren, The King of Torts, and Bleachers. Barbara Gowdy
Barbara Gowdy is the author of five previous books, including Mister Sandman and We So Seldom Look On Love, and she has twice been a finalist for both the Governor General's Award and the Giller Prize. She lives in Toronto, Ontario. |
