John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He is known for writing and directing the films The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), Passion Fish (1992), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), Lone Star (1996), and Men with Guns (1997).
Eight Men Out is a 1988 American sports drama film based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 book Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series. It was written and directed by John Sayles. The film is a dramatization of Major League Baseball's Black Sox Scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series. Most of the film was filmed at the old Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Randall Kenan was an American author. Born in Brooklyn, New York, at six weeks old Kenan moved to Duplin County, North Carolina, a small rural community, where he lived with his grandparents in a town named Wallace. Many of Kenan's novels are set around the area of his home in North Carolina. The focus of much of Kenan's work centers around what it means to be black and gay in the southern United States. Some of Kenan's most notable works include the collection of short stories Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, named a New York Times Notable Book in 1992, A Visitation of Spirits, and The Fire This Time. Kenan was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize.
Phillip Lopate is an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher.
Tod Goldberg is an American author and journalist best known for his novels Gangsters Don't Die (Counterpoint), Gangster Nation (Counterpoint), Gangsterland (Counterpoint) and Living Dead Girl, the popular Burn Notice series (Penguin/NAL) and the short story collection The Low Desert: Gangster Stories (Counterpoint).
Mark Winegardner is an American writer born and raised in Bryan, Ohio. His novels include The Godfather Returns, Crooked River Burning, and The Veracruz Blues. He published a collection of short stories, That's True of Everybody, in 2002. His newest novel, The Godfather's Revenge, was published in November 2006 by Putnam. His Godfather novels continue the story of the Corleone family depicted in Mario Puzo's The Godfather.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra is a 1997 historical fiction novel written by American author Margaret George, detailing the purported life of Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt. Published on April 15, 1997, it landed on The New York Times Best Seller list for Fiction Hardcover. In 1999, the American network ABC adapted it for television, and released it as a four-part mini series entitled Cleopatra starring the French-Chilean actress Leonor Varela alongside Timothy Dalton and Billy Zane.
Pam Conrad was an American children's writer. Her book Our House: Stories of Levittown was a Newbery Medal finalist. Her book Stonewords won an Edgar Award.
The Baseball Card Adventures is a novel series written by Dan Gutman. There are 12 books in the series, published by HarperCollins between 1997 and 2015. The books feature a boy, Joe Stoshack, who can travel through time when he touches old baseball cards. When he holds a baseball card, he feels a tingling sensation, and when it gets strong, is transported to the year that card was made and somewhere near the ballplayer on the card. Later he discovers that this power also works on very old photographs. He tries to use this power wisely, and he attempts to change history several times, but the result is always something different from his original goal.
Ronald Francis Arias is an American former senior writer and correspondent for People magazine and People en Español. He is also a highly regarded author whose novel The Road to Tamazunchale has been recognized as a milestone in Mexican-American literature.
Jo Becker is an American journalist and author and a four-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. She works as an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
Peter Mandel is an American journalist and children’s book author. Titles of his include Jackhammer Sam, Bun, Onion, Burger, and Say Hey! A Song of Willie Mays, one of the early picture books about African-American baseball stars from the 1960s, which was included in the Baseball As America exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Smithsonian.
Black Friday is an American thriller novel by James Patterson. The book was initially published in 1986 through Simon & Schuster and Patterson released a slightly re-written version of the novel in 2000 through Warner Books.
Askold Melnyczuk is an American writer whose publications include novels, essays, poems, memoir, and translations. Among his works are the novels What Is Told, Ambassador of the Dead, House of Widows and Excerpt from Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature. His work has been translated into German, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Melnyczuk also founded the journal AGNI and Arrowsmith Press (2006).
Bravelands is a children's novel series written by Rosie Best and formerly Gillian Philip under the pseudonym Erin Hunter. The series has overall been well received, with critics praising the realistic behavior of the characters, the excitement in the novels, and the description of the Bravelands, though also criticizing it for its similarities to The Lion King.
Alison MacLeod is a Canadian British literary fiction writer. She is most noted for her 2013 novel Unexploded, a longlisted nominee for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, and her 2017 short story collection All the Beloved Ghosts, a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2017 Governor General's Awards. MacLeod is an occasional contributor to BBC Radio 4, The Sunday Times and The Guardian, and has appeared at numerous literary festivals in the UK and internationally.
Ellen J. Levy is an American writer and academic who was an associate professor of English at Colorado State University before retiring from this role. Her collection of short stories, Love, In Theory, was published in 2012, and her first novel, The Cape Doctor, in 2021 to positive reviews.
Sylvia Cassedy was an American novelist and poet, who is best known for her children's and young adult fiction.
Cecelia Tichi is an American academic and author of mystery novels. She is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English and American Studies at Vanderbilt University. She is a former president of the American Studies Association, and the winner of the Jay B. Hubbell Medal for lifetime achievement in American literature.
Emilia Hart is a British-Australian novelist.
