Kate Long is an American songwriter and storyteller who writes songs that have been recorded by dozens of artists and won national awards, including the International Bluegrass Music Association Song of the Year. She is the writing coach for The Charleston Gazette and produces for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. She hosted and produced the national award-winning In Their Own Country public radio series. She regularly performs at storytelling festivals around the country.
She is currently co-director and founder of Try This West Virginia. [1] [2] [3]
Kathryn Dawn Lang, known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang has won Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical performances. Her hits include the songs "Constant Craving" and "Miss Chatelaine".
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the "Barnsley Nightingale", she has headlined various British folk festivals, and is one of the best known contemporary English folk singers. In 2001 The Guardian described her as "a superstar of the British acoustic scene." In 2007 the BBC website described her as "The first lady of young folkies". She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Patricia Rozema is a Canadian film director, writer and producer. She was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Luminița Anghel is a Romanian singer, TV personality and politician. She is internationally known for representing Romania at the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 along with percussion band Sistem. Their song, "Let Me Try", reached the third place in the final after placing first in the semi-finals; their appearance marks the country's best result in the contest along with 2010's "Playing with Fire" performed by Paula Seling and Ovi.
Karolina Myroslavivna Kuiek, better known as Ani Lorak, is a Ukrainian-Russian singer. Having been awarded the title of People's Artist of Ukraine, she has been cited as one of the most influential and popular women in Ukraine, and has also been ranked as one of the most beautiful women from Eastern Europe. In 2014, she reported the highest income of all singers in Ukraine.
Margaret "Maggie" Edson is an American playwright. She is a recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Wit. She has been a public school teacher since 1992.
Dana Louise Priest is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the Washington Post and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2014. Before becoming a full-time investigative reporter at the Post, Priest specialized in intelligence reporting and wrote many articles on the U.S. "War on terror" and was the newspaper's Pentagon correspondent. In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting citing "her persistent, painstaking reports on secret "black site" prisons and other controversial features of the government's counter-terrorism campaign." The Washington Post won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, citing the work of reporters Priest and Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille "exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials."
Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.
Kate Melina Miller-Heidke is an Australian singer and songwriter. Although classically trained, she has generally followed a career in alternative pop music. She signed to Sony Australia, Epic in the US and RCA in the UK, but since 2014 has been an independent artist. Four of her solo studio albums have peaked in the top 10 of the ARIA Albums Chart, Curiouser, Nightflight, O Vertigo! and Child in Reverse. Her most popular single, "The Last Day on Earth", reached No. 3 on the ARIA Singles Chart after being used in promos for TV soap, Neighbours, earlier in that year. At the ARIA Music Awards Miller-Heidke has been nominated 17 times.
Rosalie Sorrels was an American folk singer-songwriter. She began her public career as a singer and collector of traditional folksongs in the late 1950s. During the early 1960s she left her husband and began traveling and performing at music festivals and clubs throughout the United States. She and her five children traveled across the country as she worked to support her family and establish herself as a performer. Along the way she made many lifelong friends among the folk and beat scene. Her career of social activism, storytelling, teaching, learning, songwriting, collecting folk songs, performing, and recording spanned six decades.
Alexis Wright is a Waanyi writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and for being the first writer to win the Stella Prize twice, in 2018 for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracker" Tilmouth and in 2024 for Praiseworthy.Praiseworthy also won her the Miles Franklin Award in 2024, making her the first person to win the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award in the same year.
City of Gold is a 1957 Canadian documentary film by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig, chronicling Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush. It made innovative use of archival photos and camera movements to animate still images, while also combining narration and music to bring drama to the whole. Its innovative use of still photography in this manner has been cited by Ken Burns as the source of inspiration for his so-called Ken Burns effect, a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production to animate still images.
Carl Eugene Jackson is an American country and bluegrass musician. Jackson's first Grammy was awarded in 1992 for his duet album with John Starling titled "Spring Training." In 2003 Jackson produced the Grammy Award-winning CD titled Livin', Lovin', Losin': Songs of the Louvin Brothers – a tribute to Ira and Charlie Louvin. He also recorded one of the songs on the CD, a collection of duets featuring such artists as James Taylor, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, and others.
Donald Davis is an American storyteller, author and minister. Davis had a twenty-year career as a minister before he became a professional storyteller. He has recorded over 25 storytelling albums and written several books. His long career as a teller and his promotion of the cultural importance of storytelling through seminars and master classes has led to Davis being dubbed the "dean of storytelling".
Sheila Kay Adams is an American storyteller, author, and musician from the Sodom Laurel community in Madison County, North Carolina.
Lisa Loomer is an American playwright and screenwriter who has also worked as an actress and stand-up comic. She is best known for her play The Waiting Room (1994), in which three women from different time periods meet in a modern doctor's waiting room, each suffering from the effects of their various societies' cosmetic body modification practices. She also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Girl, Interrupted. Many of her plays deal with the experiences of Latinas and immigrant characters. Others deal with social and political issues through the lens of contemporary family life. Beyond that, Loomer's play The Waiting Room discusses issues such as body image, breast cancer, and non-Western medicine.
Debra Chasnoff was an American documentary filmmaker and activist whose films address progressive social justice issues. Her production company GroundSpark produces and distributes films, educational resources and campaigns on issues ranging from environmental concerns to affordable housing to preventing prejudice.
Tracey Scott Wilson is an American playwright, television writer, television producer, and screenwriter. She graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English and from Temple University with an MA in English Literature.
Lauren Gunderson is an American playwright, screenwriter, and short story author, born in Atlanta. She lives in San Francisco, where she teaches playwriting. Gunderson was recognized by American Theatre magazine as America's most produced living playwright at Theatre Communications Group member theaters in 2017, and again in 2019–20.