Mary Nell Steenburgen is an American actress, comedian, singer, and songwriter. After studying at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse in the 1970s, she made her professional acting debut in the Western comedy film Goin' South (1978). Steenburgen went on to earn critical acclaim for her role in Time After Time (1979) and Jonathan Demme's comedy-drama film Melvin and Howard (1980), for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Mary Pope Osborne is an American author of children's books and audiobook narrator. She is best known as the author of the Magic Tree House series, which as of 2017 sold more than 134 million copies worldwide. Both the series and Osborne have won awards, including for Osborne's charitable efforts at promoting children's literacy. One of four children, Osborne moved around in her childhood before attending the University of North Carolina. Following college, Osborne traveled before moving to New York City. She somewhat spontaneously began to write, and her first book was published in 1982. She went on to write a variety of other children's and young adult books before starting the Magic Tree House series in 1992. Osborne's sister Natalie Pope Boyce has written several compendium books to the Magic Tree House series, sometimes with Osborne's husband Will.
Mary Jane Blige is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and actress. Often referred to as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", Blige has won nine Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, four American Music Awards, twelve NAACP Image Awards, and twelve Billboard Music Awards, including the Billboard Icon Award. She has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound (2017) and another for its original song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.
Diane Ladd is an American actress. She has appeared in over 200 films and television shows. She received three Academy Award nominations for her roles in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Wild at Heart (1990), and Rambling Rose (1991), the first of which won her a British Academy Film Award. She was also nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards, winning one for her role in the sitcom Alice (1980–1981).
Ruby Wax is a British-American actress, comedian, writer, television personality, and mental health campaigner. A classically-trained actress, Wax was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for five years and co-starred on the ITV sitcom Girls on Top (1985–1986).
Mary Higgins Clark was an American author of suspense novels. Each of her 51 books was a bestseller in the United States and various European countries, and all of her novels remained in print as of 2015, with her debut suspense novel, Where Are the Children?, in its 75th printing.
Dame Catherine Ann Cookson, DBE, was a British writer. She is in the top 20 of the most widely read British novelists, with sales topping 100 million, while she retained a relatively low profile in the world of celebrity writers. Her books were inspired by her deprived youth in South Shields, North East England, the setting for her novels. With 104 titles written in her own name or two other pen names, she is one of the most prolific British novelists.
Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith was an English writer and socialite, known for her ghost stories and diaries. She also wrote novels, edited a number of anthologies, wrote for children and covered the British Royal family.
Scott Robinson and Charlene Mitchell are fictional characters and a supercouple from the Australian soap opera Neighbours. Scott was portrayed by Jason Donovan, and Charlene was portrayed by Kylie Minogue.
Anna Botsford Comstock was an acclaimed author, illustrator, and educator of natural studies. The first female professor at Cornell University, her over 900-page work, The Handbook of Nature Study (1911), is now in its 24th edition. Comstock was an American artist and wood engraver known for illustrating entomological text books with her husband, John Henry Comstock including their first joint effort, The Manual for the Study of Insects (1885). Comstock worked with Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Walton Spencer, Alice McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Ada Georgia as part of the department of Nature Study at Cornell University. Together they wrote nature study curricula to develop a curiosity for, and education about, the surrounding natural world. Comstock also was a proponent for conservationism by instilling a love and appreciation of the natural world around us.
Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. Dee was married to Ossie Davis, with whom she frequently performed until his death in 2005. She received numerous accolades, including two Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, a Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1995, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2000, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
Ruby Constance Annie Ferguson, née Ashby, was an English writer of popular fiction, including children's literature, romances and mysteries as R. C. Ashby and Ruby Ferguson. She is best known today for her novel Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary and her Jill books, a series of Pullein-Thompsonesque pony books for children and young adults.
My Sister's Keeper is the eleventh novel by the American author Jodi Picoult. Published in 2004, it tells the story of thirteen-year-old Anna Fitzgerald, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is told to donate a kidney to her elder sister Kate, who is suffering from acute leukemia.
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy is a 2003 independent romantic comedy film directed by Andrew Black and produced by Jason Faller. The screenplay, by Anne Black, Jason Faller, and Katherine Swigert, is an adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Provo, Utah. The film stars Kam Heskin as college student Elizabeth Bennet whose dreams of becoming an author supersede the cultural and societal pressures to be married. Elizabeth tries to escape the advances of several bachelors, including handsome but haughty businessman Will Darcy.
Jim Robinson is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Alan Dale. Jim was created by Reg Watson as one of Neighbours' twelve original characters. He made his on-screen debut in the soap's first episode, which was broadcast on 18 March 1985. Jim was the patriarch of the Robinson family. Dale departed the show in 1993 after falling out with the producers over pay and his character was killed off on 29 April 1993. Dale filmed some scenes for the serial in September 2018, which aired on 25 December 2018 and 25 March 2019.
Frances Imlay, also known as Fanny Godwin and Frances Wollstonecraft, was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator and diplomat Gilbert Imlay. Wollstonecraft wrote about her frequently in her later works. Fanny grew up in the household of anarchist political philosopher William Godwin, the widower of her mother, with his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont and their combined family of five children. Fanny's half-sister Mary grew up to write Frankenstein and married Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading Romantic poet, who composed a poem on Fanny's death.
Main Street is a children's novel series by Ann M. Martin aiming at age group 8–12. It was published between 2007 and 2011. The story revolves around two sisters, Ruby and Flora Northrop, who move to the small town Camden Falls to live with their grandmother after the sudden death of their parents. The books tell us about the girls' new journey and adaptation in a new town and new people with old memories, and some with rather dubious ones. There, they make new friends like Olivia and Nikki. Olivia's grandmother owns a store with Ruby's and Flora's grandmother.
Alison Weir is a British author and public historian. She primarily writes about the history of English royal women and families, in the form of biographies that explore their historical setting. She has also written numerous works of historical fiction.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.
Katherine Kamhi is an American actress, best known for her role as Meg in the slasher film Sleepaway Camp, and as Pamela Kingsley on All My Children.
