The Crystal Maze is a British game show devised by Jacques Antoine, based upon his format for the French game show Fort Boyard, and produced for Channel 4. The programme focuses on teams of contestants, a mixed group of men and women, attempting a range of challenges to earn time required to help them complete one final challenge, which if completed successfully earns them a prize. The premise of the show is themed around challenges set to different periods of human history within a fictional labyrinth of time and space, and is notable for the use of golf ball-sized Swarovski glass crystals as a reward for each challenge successfully completed by contestants, and lock-in conditions for contestants that ran out of time or broke a three-strikes rule on a challenge.
Katha Pollitt is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abortion, racism, welfare reform, feminism, and poverty.
Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Richard Bache Ayers was an American comic book artist and cartoonist best known for his work as one of Jack Kirby's inkers during the late-1950s and 1960s period known as the Silver Age of Comics, including on some of the earliest issues of Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four. He is the signature penciler of Marvel's World War II comic Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, drawing it for a 10-year run, and he co-created Magazine Enterprises' 1950s Western-horror character the Ghost Rider, a version of which he would draw for Marvel in the 1960s.
Alexander Amin Caspar Keynes is an English political adviser and former actor. Best known for starring as Edmund Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia film series, he appeared in all three installments: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Dean Young was an American contemporary poet in the lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derived influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets.
Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic and teacher. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
The Skinny is a monthly free magazine distributed in venues throughout the cities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland. Founded in 2005, the magazine features interviews and articles on music, art, film, comedy and other aspects of culture across Scotland and beyond.
The Stinging Fly is a literary magazine published in Ireland, featuring short stories, essays, and poetry. It publishes two issues each year. In 2005, The Stinging Fly moved into book publishing with the establishment of The Stinging Fly Press. The magazine was has been described as "something of a revelation in Irish literature" by The New York Times.
Poets & Writers, Inc. is one of the largest nonprofit literary organizations in the United States serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The organization publishes a bi-monthly magazine called Poets & Writers Magazine, and is headquartered in New York City.
Four Way Books is an American nonprofit literary press located in New York City, which publishes poetry and short fiction by emerging and established writers. It features the work of the winners of national poetry competitions, as well as collections accepted through general submission, panel selection, and solicitation by the editors. The press is run by director and founding editor Martha Rhodes, who is the author of five poetry collections. Four Way Books titles are distributed by University of Chicago Press. The press has received grants from New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses through their re-grant program.
Kylie Sturgess is a past President of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, an award-winning blogger, author and independent podcast host of The Token Skeptic Podcast. A Philosophy and Religious Education teacher with over ten years experience in education, Sturgess has lectured on teaching critical thinking, feminism, new media and anomalistic beliefs worldwide. She is a Member of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) Education Advisory Panel and regularly writes editorial for numerous publications, and has spoken at The Amazing Meeting Las Vegas, Dragon*Con (US), QED Con (UK). She was a presenter and Master of Ceremonies for the 2010 Global Atheist Convention and returned to the role in 2012. Her most recent book The Scope of Skepticism was released in 2012. She is a presenter at Perth's community radio station RTRFM, and a winner at the 2018 CBAA Community Radio Awards in the category of Talks, with the show Talk the Talk In 2020 she was in the final eight in the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Asia-Pacific virtual showcase.
An initial coin offering (ICO) or initial currency offering is a type of funding using cryptocurrencies. It is often a form of crowdfunding, although a private ICO which does not seek public investment is also possible. In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of "tokens" ("coins") to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ether. The tokens are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project successfully launches.
Amanda S. C. Gorman is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. She rose to fame in 2021 for writing and delivering her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of Joe Biden. Gorman's inauguration poem generated international acclaim, and shortly thereafter, two of her books achieved best-seller status, and she obtained a professional management contract.
Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.
Raymond Antrobus is a British poet, educator and writer, who has been performing poetry since 2007. In March 2019, he won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. In May 2019, Antrobus became the first poet to win the Rathbones Folio Prize for his collection The Perseverance, praised by chair of the judges as "an immensely moving book of poetry which uses his deaf experience, bereavement and Jamaican-British heritage to consider the ways we all communicate with each other." Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.
Jasminne Mendez is an Afro-Latino American author, poet, playwright, performer and educator. She is a co-founder and the program director for Tintero Projects. She is co-host on the poetry and writing podcast series, InkWell, a collaboration between Tintero Projects and Inprint Houston. Mendez is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop Peter Taylor Fellow and a Macondo and Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) alumni.
Meggie Royer is an American writer and artist.
Isele Magazine is a literary magazine that publishes fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, and book reviews.
