Laura Anne Kalpakian (born June 28, 1945) is an American author. She has also published under the pen names Juliet Fitzgerald [1] and Carenna Jane Greye. She is known for her work in the memoir genre.
Kalpakian was born in Long Beach, California, the daughter of Peggy (Kalpakian), a secretary, and William Johnson, a technical representative. [2] [3] She grew up in southern California. She earned her undergraduate degree from University of California, Riverside in 1967. After starting her career as a social worker, she earned a master's degree from the University of Delaware in 1970. She earned a Ph.D. in literature from the University of California, San Diego in 1977.
She has received funding from the National Endowment of the Arts and has won a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and the first Anahid Literary Award for an American writer of Armenian descent. [4] [5]
Kalpakian's 1992 novel Graced Land was adapted into the TV movie The Woman Who Loved Elvis , directed by Bill Bixby and starring Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold. [6]
Her sons are composer Bear McCreary and singer/musician Brendan McCreary.
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings.
Mary Ann Mobley was an American actress, television personality, and Miss America 1959.
Fanny Howe is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Howe has written more than 20 books of poetry and prose. Her major works include poetry such as One Crossed Out, Gone, and Second Childhood, the novels Nod, The Deep North, and Indivisible, and collected essays The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life and The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation. She was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation. She is also the recipient of the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the Most Outstanding Book of Poetry Published in 2000 from the Academy of American Poets and she was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize She has also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts, and the Village Voice. She is professor emerita of Writing and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Laura San Giacomo is an American actress. She played Cynthia in the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) for which she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, Kit De Luca in the film Pretty Woman (1990), Crazy Cora in the film Quigley Down Under (1990), Nadine Cross in The Stand (1994), and Maya Gallo on the sitcom Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003). A BAFTA and two-time Golden Globe Award nominee, she played the regular role of Rhetta Rodriguez on the drama Saving Grace (2007–2010), and the recurring role of Dr. Grace Confalone on the drama NCIS (2016–2022).
Barbara Eden is an American actress and singer, who starred as the title character in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970). Her other roles included Roslyn Pierce opposite Elvis Presley in Flaming Star (1960), Lieutenant (JG) Cathy Connors in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and a single widowed mother, Stella Johnson, in the film Harper Valley PTA (1978) and in the television series of the same name.
Frances Marion was an American screenwriter, director, journalist and author often cited as one of the most renowned female screenwriters of the 20th century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos. During the course of her career, she wrote over 325 scripts. She was the first writer to win two Academy Awards. Marion began her film career working for filmmaker Lois Weber. She wrote numerous silent film scenarios for actress Mary Pickford, before transitioning to writing sound films.
Irene Frances Rich was an American actress who worked in both silent films, talkies, and radio.
Carrie Louise Hamilton was an American actress, playwright and singer. Hamilton was a daughter of comedian Carol Burnett and producer Joe Hamilton. She was also the older sister of Jody Hamilton, an actress and producer, and singer Erin Hamilton.
Martha Grimes is an American writer of detective fiction. She is best known for a series featuring Richard Jury, a Scotland Yard inspector, and Melrose Plant, an aristocrat turned amateur sleuth.
Caitlin Davies is an English author, historian, journalist and teacher. She has written several books about social history and women's history. Her historical works have focused on swimmers, female prisoners, female criminals, and female private investigators.
Frances Lee McCain is an American actress.
Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published five collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.
Carol Muske-Dukes is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and professor, and the former poet laureate of California (2008–2011). Her most recent book of poetry, Sparrow, chronicling the love and loss of Muske-Dukes’ late husband, actor David Dukes, was a National Book Award finalist.
Sarah Manguso is an American writer and poet. In 2007, she was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her memoir The Two Kinds of Decay (2008), was named an "Editors’ Choice" title by the New York Times Sunday Book Review and a 2008 "Best Nonfiction Book of the Year" by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her book Ongoingness: The End of a Diary (2015) was also named a New York Times "Editors’ Choice." Her debut novel, Very Cold People, was published by Penguin in 2022.
Louise A. DeSalvo was an American writer, editor, professor, and lecturer who lived in New Jersey. Much of her work focused on Italian American culture, though she was also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar.
Carol Lee Flinders is a writer, independent scholar, educator, speaker, and former syndicated columnist. She is best known as one of the three authors of Laurel's Kitchen along with Laurel Robertson and Bronwen Godfrey. She is also the co- author of The Making of a Teacher with Tim Flinders.
Suzanne Jill Levine is an American writer, poet, literary translator and scholar.
Nellie Blessing Eyster was an American journalist, writer, lecturer, and social reformer. She was a grand-niece of Barbara Fritchie.
Joan Trodden Keefe was an Irish poet, translator, and scholar.
Karen Harriet Brodine was an American poet, dancer, educator, writer, activist, and typesetter, based in San Francisco and Seattle.