Diana Wynne Jones was an English novelist, poet, academic, literary critic, and short story writer. She principally wrote fantasy and speculative fiction novels for children and young adults. Although usually described as fantasy, some of her work also incorporates science fiction themes and elements of realism. Jones's work often explores themes of time travel and parallel or multiple universes. Some of her better-known works are the Chrestomanci series, the Dalemark series, the three Moving Castle novels, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.
Julie Pottinger, better known by her pen name, Julia Quinn, is an American author of historical romance fiction. Her novels have been translated into 41 languages and have appeared on The New York Times Bestseller List 19 times. She has been inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Her Bridgerton series of novels has been adapted for Netflix by Shondaland under the title Bridgerton.
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Andrea Levy was an English author best known for the novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents, and her work explores topics related to British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural and national identities.
Song of Solomon is a 1977 novel by American author Toni Morrison, her third to be published. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American man living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood.
Dame Rose Tremain is an English novelist, short story writer, and former Chancellor of the University of East Anglia.
Minette Caroline Mary Walters DL is an English writer.
Laura Lippman is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels. Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.
Cynthia Weil was an American songwriter who wrote many songs together with her husband Barry Mann. Weil and Mann were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. In 1987, she was inducted with her husband into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2011, they jointly received the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honor bestowed by that Hall of Fame.
Helen Oyeyemi FRSL is a British novelist and writer of short stories.
Lucy Elizabeth Simon was an American composer for the theatre and of popular songs. She recorded and performed as a singer and songwriter, and was known for the musicals The Secret Garden (1991) and Doctor Zhivago (2011).
Santa Montefiore is a British author.
The Door is a novel by Hungarian writer Magda Szabó. The Door was originally published in Hungary in 1987, and translated into English in 1995 by Stefan Draughon for American publication, and again in 2005 by Len Rix for British publication. Rix's translation won the 2006 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Rix's translation was republished in 2015 by New York Review Books Classics.
Natasha Khan, known professionally as Bat for Lashes, is an English singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. She has released six studio albums: Fur and Gold (2006), Two Suns (2009), The Haunted Man (2012), The Bride (2016), Lost Girls (2019), and The Dream of Delphi (2024). She has received three Mercury Prize nominations. Khan is also the vocalist for Sexwitch, a collaboration with the rock band Toy and producer Dan Carey.
Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Micol Ostow is an American author, editor and educator who has written more than 40 published works. Her first original hardcover novel, Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa, was named a "New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age". She has also been the ghostwriter for novelizations of television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and Fearless.
Sceptre is an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, a British publishing house which is a division of Hachette UK.
Psalm 45 is the 45th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "My heart is inditing a good matter". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible, this psalm is Psalm 44. In Latin, it is known as "Eructavit cor meum". It was composed by the sons of Korach on the shoshanim–either a musical instrument or the tune to which the psalm should be sung. The psalm has been interpreted as an epithalamium, or wedding song, written to a king on the day of his marriage to a foreign woman, and is one of the royal psalms.
The Help is a 2011 American period drama film written and directed by Tate Taylor and based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name. The film features an ensemble cast, including Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson, and Sissy Spacek. The film and novel recount the story of a young white woman and aspiring journalist Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan. The story focuses on her relationship with two black maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 Jackson, Mississippi. In an attempt to become a legitimate journalist and writer, Skeeter decides to write a book from the point of view of the maids, exposing the racism they face as they work for white families. Black domestic workers in 1960s United States were referred to as "the help", hence the title of the journalistic exposé, the novel and the film. "The Help" brings to light the challenges and discrimination that African American people faced.
Irene Sankoff is a Canadian librettist and composer–lyricist, best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Come from Away with her writing partner and husband, David Hein.
