Forrest James Ackerman was an American magazine editor; science fiction writer and literary agent; a founder of science fiction fandom; a leading expert on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films; a prominent advocate of the Esperanto language; and one of the world's most avid collectors of genre books and film memorabilia. He was based in Los Angeles, California.
Rita Süssmuth is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). She served as the 10th President of the Bundestag.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. She has written ten books, both fiction and non-fiction. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University, and is sometimes grouped with novelists such as Richard Powers and Alan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.
Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan writer, activist, blogger, poet and essayist.
Catherine Clinton is the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She specializes in American History, with an emphasis on the history of the South, the American Civil War, American women, and African American history.
Marie Arana is an author, editor, journalist, critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress.
Liu Xiaobo was a Chinese writer, literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end communist one-party rule in China. He was arrested numerous times, and was described as China's most prominent dissident and the country's most famous political prisoner. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer; he died a few weeks later on 13 July 2017.
Lee Hyman Rosenthal is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Hualing Nieh Engle, née Nieh Hua-ling, is a Chinese novelist, fiction writer, and poet. She is a professor emerita at the University of Iowa.
Geeta Rao Gupta is a leader on gender, women's issues, and HIV/AIDS who has been serving as executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women and senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation since 2017. She is frequently consulted on issues related to AIDS prevention and women's vulnerability to HIV and is an advocate for women's economic and social empowerment to fight disease, poverty and hunger.
Angela K. Wilson is an American physical, theoretical, and computational chemist. She is currently the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the department of chemistry of Michigan State University. At Michigan State University, she also serves as the Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives in the College of Natural Sciences, and as Director of the MSU Center for Quantum Computing, Science, and Engineering (MSU-Q), a newly formed center at MSU, stemming from MSU's long history in quantum computing research.
Joanne Liu, M.D., O.Q., M.S.C, is a Canadian pediatric emergency medicine physician, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal, Professor of Clinical Medicine at McGill University, and the previous International President of Médecins sans Frontières. She was elected president during MSF's International General Assembly in June 2013.
Susan Rose-Ackerman is Henry R. Luce Professor Emeritus of Law and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University. She is an expert in political corruption and development, administrative law, law and regulatory policy, the nonprofit sector, and federalism.
Elliot Ackerman is an American author and former Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader. He is the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have received significant critical acclaim, to include nominations for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medals in both fiction and non-fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He served as a White House Fellow in the Obama administration and is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rachel Ward is an American applied mathematician at the University of Texas at Austin. She is known for work on machine learning, optimization, and signal processing. At the University of Texas, she is W. A. "Tex" Moncrief Distinguished Professor in Computational Engineering and Sciences—Data Science, and professor of mathematics.
Esther Allen is a writer, professor, and translator of French-language and Spanish-language literature into English. She is on the faculties of Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Allen co-founded PEN World Voices: the New York Festival of International Literature (2004), and worked with PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants from their inception in 2003 to 2010. Allen heads the Development Committee of the American Literary Translators Association, and serves on the board of Writers Omi, part of Omi International Arts Center, on the Advisory Council to the Spanish-language program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and on the Selection Committee for the French Voices translation subvention program of the Services culturels français.
Jeanette Grasselli Brown is an American analytical chemist and spectroscopist who is known for her work with Standard Oil of Ohio as an industrial researcher in the field of spectroscopy.
Meng Lang was a Chinese poet and dissident. He was a signatory of the human rights manifesto Charter 08 and a co-founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center.
Sara Reva Horowitz is an American Holocaust literary scholar. She is a professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities and former Director of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. She is also a member of the academic advisory board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Merritt Tierce is an American short-story author, story editor, essayist, activist, and novelist. Tierce was born in Texas and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, receiving her MFA in Fiction in 2011. She previously taught at the University of Iowa. She was a founding board member of the Texas Equal Access Fund and previously worked as Executive Director of the TEA. She currently resides in Los Angeles and is a writer for Orange is the New Black.
