Amy Ruth Tan is an American author best known for her novel The Joy Luck Club (1989), which was adapted into a 1993 film. She is also known for other novels, short story collections, children's books, and a memoir.
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling living author and one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time, with over 800 million copies sold. As of 2021, she has written 190 books, including over 140 novels.
Marcia Gay Harden is an American actress. Her breakthrough came in the 1990 Coen brothers' film Miller's Crossing. For her portrayal of artist Lee Krasner in the 2000 biographical film Pollock, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance as a troubled wife in the drama film Mystic River (2003). Her other notable film credits include The First Wives Club (1996), Flubber (1997), Space Cowboys (2000), Mona Lisa Smile (2003), and the Fifty Shades film series (2015–2018).
Padma Parvati Lakshmi is an Indian-American author, model, activist, and television host. Born in India, Lakshmi immigrated to the United States as a child and was raised in California. She became a model before embarking on a career in television. Lakshmi hosted the cooking competition program Top Chef on Bravo continuously from 2006 to 2023. For her work, she received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Reality Host in 2009 and 2020 through 2022. She is also the creator, host, and executive producer of the docuseries Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi, which premiered in June 2020 on Hulu. The series covers the food and culture of immigrant and indigenous communities across America.
Maximillian Michael Brooks is an American author. He is the son of comedian Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft. Much of Brooks's writing focuses on zombie stories. He was a senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, New York.
Faith Ringgold was an American painter, author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
Dorothy West was an American novelist short-story writer, and magazine editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement in the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated black art, literature, and music. She was one of the few Black women writers to be published in major literary magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. She is best known for her 1948 novel The Living Is Easy, about the life of an upper-class black family and their attempts to climb the social ladder. She also explored the complexities of the black experience in the United States in short stories and essays that challenged stereotypes and explored themes such as race, class, and gender. Her work paved the way for future generations of African-American writers, and her legacy continues to inspire and influence writers today.
Holly Black is an American writer and editor best known for her children's and young adult fiction. Her most recent work is the New York Times bestselling young adult Folk of the Air series. She is also well known for The Spiderwick Chronicles, a series of children's fantasy books she created with writer and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, and her debut trilogy of young adult novels officially called the Modern Faerie Tales. Black has won a Lodestar Award, a Nebula Award, and a Newbery Honor.
Paule Marshall was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant.
Padma Tiruponithura Venkatraman, also known as T. V. Padma, is an Indian-American author and scientist.
Climbing the Stairs is a young-adult novel written by Padma Venkatraman. It was published on 1 May 2008 by Penguin USA. The novel depicts fifteen-year-old Vidya, who is coming of age in a tumultuous time as her native India struggles for independence and the world battles in World War II. When her father suffers brain damage during an Indian independence protest, Vidya is forced to relocate with her family from Bombay to her paternal grandfather’s traditional home in Madras. In this new home, Vidya fights the subservient role assigned to her as a woman and finds sanctuary in the men’s library where she studies and dreams of freedom and college.
Allyson Braithwaite Condie is an author of young adult and middle grade fiction. Her novel Matched was a #1 New York Times and international bestseller, and spent over a year on the New York Times Bestseller List. The sequels are also New York Times bestsellers. Matched was chosen as one of YALSA's 2011 Teens' Top Ten and named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2010. All three books are available in 30+ languages.
Marissa Meyer is an American novelist. A large portion of her bibliography is centered on retellings of fairy tales. She is best known for her series The Lunar Chronicles, which includes her 2012 debut novel, Cinder.
Nikki Glaser is an American stand-up comedian, actress, podcaster, radio host, and television host. She was the host of the television series Not Safe with Nikki Glaser, which premiered on Comedy Central and Much on February 9, 2016. She is the star of the 2022 reality show Welcome Home Nikki Glaser? on E!. She hosted the Reality TV dating shows Blind Date (2019) on Bravo and FBoy Island (2021-) on HBO Max & The CW and its spinoff Lovers and Liars on The CW.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes was an American feminist, child-welfare advocate, activist, public speaker, author, and small business owner. Pitman Hughes co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance. Her activism and friendship with Gloria Steinem established racial balance in the nascent feminist movement.
Colleen Hoover is an American author who writes primarily novels in the romance and young adult fiction genres. She is best known for her 2016 romance novel It Ends with Us. Many of her works were self-published before they were picked up by a publishing house. As of October 2022, Hoover has sold approximately 20 million books. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Raquel Jaramillo Palacio is an American author and graphic designer. She is the author of several novels for children, including the best-selling Wonder, which was adapted into a 2017 film starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson.
Renée Watson is an American teaching artist and author of children's books, best known for her award-winning and New York Times bestselling young adult novel Piecing Me Together, for which she received the John Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Bank Street Children's Book Committee's Josette Frank Award for fiction. Watson founded the nonprofit I, Too, Arts Collective to provide creative arts programs to the Harlem community. She is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street is a children's novel by Karina Yan Glaser published in 2017. It was Glaser's debut novel and is the first novel in a series of seven about a large mixed-race family living in Harlem and their friends, neighbors and extended family. In this novel, the family must find a way to stay in their beloved brownstone apartment after their landlord declines to renew their lease.
The Vanderbeekers is a series of seven middle-grade children's novels written and illustrated by Asian American author Karina Yan Glaser. Set primarily in Harlem, the books follow the adventures of large multiracial family and their friends and neighbors. Although published between 2017 and 2023, reviewers noted that that books evoke older series about large families in urban settings, including Elizabeth Enright's Melendy family books and Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family series, as well as Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks and Gertrude Chandler Warner's original Boxcar Children series. By the time of the final book's release in 2023, the Vanderbeekers books had sold more than half a million copies and been translated into 13 languages.
