Christina Thompson is best known for her book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, which won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Nonfiction. [1]
Christina Thompson was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and grew up outside of Boston. She received her bachelor's degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa, from Dartmouth College [2] in 1981 and her Ph.D. in English from University of Melbourne in 1990. [3] From 1994 to 1998 she was editor of Meanjin, one of Australia's leading literary journals. [4]
The editor of Harvard Review since 2000, [5] she teaches in the Writing Program at Harvard University Extension, [6] where she was awarded the James E. Conway Teaching Writing Award in 2008.
Her first book, a memoir called Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, was published in July 2008 by Bloomsbury USA . The story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Māori of New Zealand, [7] it was a finalist for the 2009 NSW Premier's Literary Award and the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. [8]
Her second book, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, is a history of Polynesian voyaging. Published March 12, 2019 by Harper, it won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Nonfiction, [9] the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, [10] and the 2019 New South Wales Premier's History Awards, and was a finalist for the 2020 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, [11] the 2019 Mountbatten Maritime Award, the 2019 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award [12] and the 2019 Queensland Literary Award. [13]
Her awards and fellowships include a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, [14] a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and grants from Australia Council, Arts Victoria, the Institute of International Education, and the Australian Federation of University Women.
She is married to Tauwhitu Parangi, a member of the Ngāti Rēhia hapu of the Ngāpuhi iwi of Aotearoa/New Zealand, with whom she has three sons.
Delta Kappa Epsilon (ΔΚΕ), commonly known as DKE or Deke, is one of the oldest fraternities in the United States, with fifty-six active chapters and five active colonies across North America. It was founded at Yale College in 1844 by fifteen sophomores who were discontented with the existing fraternity order on campus. The men established a fellowship where the candidate most favored was "he who combined in the most equal proportions the Gentleman, the Scholar, and the Jolly Good Fellow."
The Phi Beta Kappa Society (ΦΒΚ) is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, in December 1776. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct outstanding students of arts and sciences at select American colleges and universities. Since its inception, its inducted members include 17 United States presidents, 42 United States Supreme Court justices, and 136 Nobel laureates.
Phi Theta Kappa is an honor society for students of associate degree-granting colleges. Its headquarters are in Jackson, Mississippi and it has more than 4.3 million members in nearly 1,300 chapters in eleven nations.
Henri Cole is an American poet, who has published many collections of poetry and a memoir. His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic.
Alpha Sigma Phi (ΑΣΦ), commonly known as Alpha Sig, is an intercollegiate men's social fraternity with 181 active chapters and provisional chapters. Founded at Yale in 1845, it is the 10th oldest Greek letter fraternity in the United States.
Wofford College is a private residential liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1854, it is one of the few four-year institutions in the southeastern United States founded before the American Civil War that still operates on its original campus. The 175-acre (71 ha) campus is a national arboretum.
Phi Mu (ΦΜ) is the second oldest female fraternal organization established in the United States.
Delta Phi (ΔΦ) is a fraternal society established in Schenectady, New York, on November 17, 1827. Its first chapter was founded at Union College, and was the third and final member of the Union Triad. In 1879, William Raimond Baird's American College Fraternities characterized the fraternity's membership as being largely drawn from the old Knickerbocker families of New York and New Jersey.
Bruce Gregory Friedrich is co-founder and president of The Good Food Institute (GFI), a Y Combinator funded non-profit that promotes plant- and cultivated meat alternatives to conventional animal meat. He is also a co-founder of the alternative protein venture capital firm New Crop Capital. Friedrich previously worked for PETA and Farm Sanctuary.
Joseph Epstein is an American writer who was the editor of the magazine The American Scholar from 1975 to 1997. He has published books on subjects such as Ambition, Snobbery, Envy, Friendship, and Charm, as well as collections of his essays and stories, many of which previously appeared in various publications.
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Award is a non-fiction literary award given by the Phi Beta Kappa society, the oldest academic society of the United States, for books that have made the most significant contributions to the humanities. Albert William Levi won the first of these awards, in 1960.
Allison Blakely is an academic historian.
The expansion of Greek letter organizations into Canada was an important stage of the North American fraternity movement, beginning in 1879 with the establishment of a chapter of Zeta Psi at the University of Toronto. In 1883, the same fraternity established a chapter at McGill University. Other early foundations were Kappa Alpha Society at Toronto in 1892 and at McGill in 1899, and Alpha Delta Phi at Toronto in 1893 and at McGill in 1897. The first sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, was established in Toronto in 1887. In 1902, the first international chapter of Phi Delta Theta was established at McGill University as the Quebec Alpha.
Jeremy Kleiner is an American film producer. He and his fellow producers won two Academy Awards for Best Picture for the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave and the 2016 film Moonlight. Since 2013 he has served as the Co-President of Plan B Entertainment serving with Dede Gardner.
Francis Edward Su is an American mathematician. He joined the Harvey Mudd College faculty in 1996, and is currently Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics. Su served as president of the Mathematical Association of America from 2015–2017 and is serving as a Vice President of the American Mathematical Society from 2020-2023. Su has received multiple awards from the MAA, including the Henry L. Alder Award and a Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, both for distinguished teaching. He was also a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar during the 2019-2020 term. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, in the 2025 class of fellows.
Ruth Franklin is an American literary critic. She is a former editor at The New Republic and an Adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her first biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016.