Bryan Mealer | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Education | University of Texas at Austin |
Occupation(s) | Journalist and Writer |
Bryan Mealer (born 1974) is an American journalist and author. [1] He is the author of four books: All Things Must Fight to Live about his experiences covering war in the Congo, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (with inventor William Kamkwamba), Muck City about high school football in a rural African American communities in Florida, and The Kings of Big Spring about his family history in Texas. He has written for publications including The Guardian and Texas Monthly . The 2019 film The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind was adapted from the book.
Mealer was born in Odessa, Texas and grew up in West Texas and San Antonio. [2] He received a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. [3]
Kirkus Reviews described his book on his experiences covering the war in Congo as containing "Gutsy, richly descriptive recollections effectively conjure grisly events in a troubled nation." [4]
The New York Times reviewed his book Muck City about the Glades Central High School Raiders of Belle Glade, Florida and the pursuit of football success. [5] The Palm Beach Post called the book a lesson-filled trip into the past against a backdrop of AIDs, murder, drug use, and tragedy. [6] Kirkus Reviews described it as a "stirring tale of sports as a means of escape from dire circumstances" in Florida's cane sugar producing region. [7] Publishers Weekly noted "it chronicles the evolution of high school football in Belle Glade, Fla.—among the poorest communities in the U.S. and defined by the fertile black silt that helped build a sugarcane-farming empire." [8] Mealer was interviewed about the book on NPR in 2012. [9]
Belle Glade is a city in south-central Florida and it is the far western part of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States, on the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 16,698, down from 17,467 in the 2010 census.
Big Spring is a city in and the county seat of Howard County, Texas, United States, at the crossroads of U.S. Highway 87 and Interstate 20. The population was 26,144 at the 2020 census. Big Spring was established as the county seat of Howard County in 1882; it is the largest community in the county.
Fufu is a pounded meal found in West African cuisine. It is a Twi word that originates from the Akans in Ghana. The word has been expanded to include several variations of the pounded meal found in other African countries including Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Angola and Gabon. It also includes variations in the Greater Antilles and Central America, where African culinary influence is high.
Jessie Lee Hester is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver for 11 years in the National Football League (NFL). Hester played for the Los Angeles Raiders, Atlanta Falcons, Indianapolis Colts, and the Los Angeles / St. Louis Rams from 1985 to 1995. He played college football at Florida State.
Muddle Earth is a children's novel by Paul Stewart, published in 2003, and illustrated by Chris Riddell. It is largely a parody of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Like LOTR it is divided into three sections: Englebert the Enormous, Here Be Dragons and Doctor Cuddles of Giggle Glade. In 2011, a sequel titled Muddle Earth Too was published.
Glades Central Community High School is a high school in Belle Glade, Florida. In the 2014–15 school year its enrollment numbered 992 students. The school was a football powerhouse. In 2001, the New York Times reported that Glades Central had produced more current National Football League players than any other high school in the country with 7 during the 2001 season. The school has a football rivalry with fellow powerhouse Pahokee High School.
William Kamkwamba, is a Malawian inventor, engineer, and author. He gained renown in his country in 2001 when he built a wind turbine to power multiple electrical appliances in his family's house in Wimbe, 23 kilometres (14 mi) east of Kasungu, using blue gum trees, bicycle parts, and materials collected in a local scrapyard. Since then, he has built a solar-powered water pump that supplies the first drinking water in his village and two other wind turbines, the tallest standing at 12 meters (39 ft), and has built two more, including one in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi.
Jo Becker is an American journalist and author and a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. She works as an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
The Maze Runner is a 2009 dystopian novel by American author James Dashner. It takes place in a world suffering from a coronal mass ejection and whose surviving civilians fight to avoid an apocalyptic illness called the Flare. It is written from the perspective of Thomas, a 16-year-old boy who wakes up with no memories inside an artificially produced maze. An organization called WICKED controls the world politically, seeks a cure to the Flare, and uses the youngest generation of civilians who are immune to it as test subjects.
Burnistoun is a Scottish comedy sketch show broadcast by BBC Scotland, written by comedians Iain Connell and Robert Florence. The show was produced by The Comedy Unit and later in series 3 was co-produced by Bold Yin.
Bryan Burrough is an American author and correspondent for Vanity Fair. He has written six books. Burrough was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Dallas, Texas, between 1983 and 1992. He has written for Vanity Fair since 1992. While reporting for The Wall Street Journal, he won the Gerard Loeb Award for excellence in financial journalism three times. Burrough has written a number of book reviews and op-ed articles for publications such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. He has also made appearances on Today, Good Morning America, and many documentaries.
Presently curated and organized by Emeka Okafor, Henry Barnor and Jennifer Wolfe, Maker Faire Africa is an international organization co-founded by Mark Grimes Emeka Okafor, Lars Hasselblad Torres, Erik Hersman (Afrigadget) and Nii Simmonds. Maker Faire Africa aims to engage with on-the-ground breakthrough organizations and individual makers to sharpen focus on locally generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies that solve immediate challenges to development.
The Death Cure is a 2011 young adult dystopian science fiction novel written by American writer James Dashner and the third published in The Maze Runner series. It was published on 11 October 2011 by Delacorte Press and was preceded in publication order by The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials and followed by the series prequels, The Kill Order and The Fever Code.
Nocturnal is a novel and podcast by author Scott Sigler. The novel was originally released in 2007 in podcast format, with a print format releasing in 2012 by Crown Publishing with some elements from the original version altered.
Rude Boy USA is a series of three crime fiction novels written by the American novelist Victoria Bolton. The series is set in New York City and Jamaica and follows characters, Bernie “Banks” Rhodos, Celia “Bunny” Jones, John LeBlanc, Ben Berardi, and Jerome Dexter-Dixon.
Masitala is a village in Kasungu District, central Malawi. Its population is about 200 and the spoken languages are Chichewa and Chitumbuka.
Cross Justice is the 23rd book of the Alex Cross series, written by James Patterson.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a 2019 drama film written, directed by and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor in his feature directorial debut. The film is based on the memoir of the same name by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. It was screened in the Premieres section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and began streaming in most territories on Netflix on 1 March 2019. It was selected as the British entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. It received widely positive reviews with praise going to Ejiofor's direction and the acting.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need is a 2021 book by Bill Gates. In it, Gates presents what he learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address global warming and recommends technological strategies to tackle it.