Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. His breakout collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by Cathedral (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, "The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form."
David James Pelzer is an American author of several autobiographical and self-help books. His 1995 memoir of childhood abuse, A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive, was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for several years, and in 5 years had sold at least 1.6 million copies. The book brought Pelzer fame, and has also been a source of controversy, with accusations of several events being fabricated coming from both family members and journalists.
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions often ran contrary to those of her contemporaries.
Amber Rose Tamblyn is an American actress and author. She first came to national attention in her role on the soap opera General Hospital as Emily Quartermaine at the age of 11. She followed with a starring role on the prime-time series Joan of Arcadia, portraying the title character, Joan Girardi, for which she received Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Her feature film work includes roles such as Tibby Rollins from the first two The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Megan McBride in 127 Hours (2010), as well as the critically acclaimed film, Stephanie Daley opposite Tilda Swinton which debuted at The Sundance Film Festival and for which Tamblyn won Best Actress at The Locarno International Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In 2016, she made her directorial debut with the film Paint It Black starring Alia Shawkat and based on Janet Fitch's 2006 novel of the same name. In 2021 she starred opposite Diane Lane in FX's Y: The Last Man.
Meredith Ann Baxter is an American actress and producer. She is known for her roles on the CBS sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie (1972–1973), ABC drama series Family (1976–1980) and the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982–1989). A five-time Emmy Award nominee, one of her nominations was for playing the title role in the 1992 TV film A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story.
V, formerly Eve Ensler, is an American playwright, author, performer, feminist, and activist. V is best known for her play The Vagina Monologues. In 2006 Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called The Vagina Monologues "probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade."
Ann K. Powers is an American writer and popular music critic. She is a music critic for NPR and a contributor at the Los Angeles Times, where she was previously chief pop critic. She has also written for other publications, such as The New York Times, Blender and The Village Voice. Powers is the author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, a memoir; Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music, on eroticism in American pop music; and Piece by Piece, co-authored with Tori Amos.
A Million Little Pieces is a book by James Frey, originally sold as a memoir and later marketed as a semi-fictional novel following Frey's admission that many parts of the book were fabricated. It tells the story of a 23-year-old alcoholic and abuser of other drugs and how he copes with rehabilitation in a twelve steps-oriented treatment center.
Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and has identified with the San Francisco, California literary and arts community for many years. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their exposition of the queercore community.
Elizabeth Gilbert is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold over 12 million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. The book was also made into a film of the same name in 2010.
Dani Shapiro is an American writer, the author of six novels including Family History (2003), Black & White (2007) and most recently Signal Fires (2022) and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion (1998), Devotion (2010), Hourglass (2017), and Inheritance (2019). She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Elle. In February 2019, she created an original podcast on iHeart Radio called Family Secrets.
Beverly (Bev) Ann Bivens, born in Santa Ana, California on April 28, 1946, is the former lead singer of the American West Coast folk rock group We Five from 1965 to 1967. Since 2021 she has been the original band's last surviving member. After her marriage to jazz musician Fred Marshall and the break-up of We Five, she sang for a while with the experimental Light Sound Dimension, but by the late 1960s Bivens had largely left the music scene. After many years of relative seclusion, she sang at the opening of an exhibition in San Francisco in 2009. Her son is the saxophonist Joshi Marshall.
Johann Eduard Hari is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who wrote for The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent and later resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention spans.
Julia Scheeres is a journalist and nonfiction author. Born in Lafayette, Indiana, Scheeres received a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a master's in journalism from the University of Southern California. Now living and working in San Francisco, California, she has been a contributor to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired News, and LA Weekly. She is a 2006 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Anne Johnson Davis was an American author and public speaker who in 2008 published Hell Minus One, a memoir in which she claimed to have been a childhood victim of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA). In the book, Davis further claimed that her allegations of abuse were corroborated through a confession by her mother and stepfather made to Lt. Detective Matt Jacobson of the Utah Attorney General's office.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is an American author and activist. She is the author of two memoirs and three novels, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies.
Dean Tong is an American author, public speaker, consultant, and trial expert in the field of false child abuse allegations. He has consulted for the media on cases such as that of Elian Gonzalez. He is the author of three books inspired by his personal experience with being accused of child abuse in 1985. In addition to testifying as an expert witness, he has appeared on radio talk shows and television speaking on the topic of false abuse accusations. He has also been quoted by publications on the topic including by the Chicago Defender, The Virginian-Pilot, The Boston Globe, and The Denver Post.
Caroline Gotschall Calloway is an American social media celebrity who initially developed a following while a student at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the 2023 memoir Scammer, the title of which references accusations of scamming she has received from fans and critics.
Educated (2018) is a memoir by the American author Tara Westover. Westover recounts overcoming her survivalist Mormon family in order to go to college, and emphasizes the importance of education in enlarging her world. She details her journey from her isolated life in the mountains of Idaho to completing a PhD program in history at Cambridge University. She started college at the age of 17 having had no formal education. She explores her struggle to reconcile her desire to learn with the world she inhabited with her father.
Ellen Sussman is a New York Times bestselling author of four novels. She was born in Trenton, New Jersey and resides in Sebastopol, California with her husband. Sussman's work features settings and characters from France to Bali to the United States. She lived in Paris from 1988 to 1993 with her first husband and two daughters.
