Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books, as well as several short stories. His first published novel was Fight Club, which was adapted into a film of the same title.
Landmark Worldwide, or simply Landmark, is an American employee-owned for-profit company that offers personal-development programs, with their most-known being the Landmark Forum. It is one of several Large Group Awareness Training programs.
The term large-group awareness training (LGAT) refers to activities—usually offered by groups with links to the human potential movement—which claim to increase self-awareness and to bring about desirable transformations in individuals' personal lives. LGATs are unconventional; they often take place over several days, and may compromise participants' mental wellbeing.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a fantasy novel written by the British author J. K. Rowling. It is the fifth novel in the Harry Potter series. It follows Harry Potter's struggles through his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, including the surreptitious return of the antagonist Lord Voldemort, O.W.L. exams, and an obstructive Ministry of Magic. The novel was published on 21 June 2003 by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom, Scholastic in the United States, and Raincoast in Canada. It sold five million copies in the first 24 hours of publication.
Diana J. Gabaldon is an American author, known for the Outlander series of novels. Her books merge multiple genres, featuring elements of historical fiction, romance, mystery, adventure and science fiction/fantasy. A television adaptation of the Outlander novels premiered on Starz in 2014.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a young adult novel by Ann Brashares published in 2001. It follows the adventures of four best friends — Lena Kaligaris, Tibby Rollins, Bridget Vreeland, and Carmen Lowell, who will be spending their first summer apart when a magical pair of jeans comes into their lives, turning their summer upside down. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2005. Four sequels to the book have been published, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood; Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood; Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood; and Sisterhood Everlasting.
A. H. Almaas is the pen name of A. Hameed Ali, an American writer and spiritual teacher who writes about and teaches an approach to spiritual development informed by modern psychology and therapy which he calls the Diamond Approach. "Almaas" is the Arabic word for "diamond". Almaas is originally from Kuwait. He is the spiritual head of the Ridhwan School.
Frederick Philip Lenz III, also known as Rama, Zen Master Rama and Atmananda was an American spiritual leader, writer, software designer, and record producer. He founded what he termed "American Buddhism", which incorporated the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Vedanta, mysticism, and New Age ideas.
John-Roger Hinkins was an American author, public speaker, and founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA), as well as several other New Age, spiritual, and self-help organizations.
Gail Godwin is an American novelist and short story writer. Godwin has written 14 novels, two short story collections, three non-fiction books, and ten libretti. Her primary literary accomplishments are her novels, which have included five best-sellers and three finalists for the National Book Award. Most of her books are realistic fiction novels that follow a character's psychological and intellectual development, often based on themes taken from Godwin's own life.
Emily Gould is an American author, novelist and blogger who worked as an editor at Gawker. She has written several short stories and novels and is the co-owner, with fellow writer Ruth Curry, of the independent e-bookstore Emily Books.
Gillian Schieber Flynn is an American author, screenwriter, and producer, best known for her thriller and mystery novels Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009), and Gone Girl (2012), all of which have received critical acclaim. Her works have been translated into 40 languages, and by 2016, Gone Girl had sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
Elspeth Barker was a Scottish novelist and journalist whose gothic novel O Caledonia became a cult classic.
Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition (2003), and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of the same core cast of characters. The plot comprises the intersecting tales of three protagonists: Hollis Henry, a musician-turned-journalist researching a story on locative art; Tito, a young Cuban-Chinese operative whose family is on occasion in the employ of a renegade ex-CIA agent; and Milgrim, a drug-addled translator held captive by Brown, a strangely authoritarian and secretive man. Themes explored include the ubiquity of locative technology, the eversion of cyberspace and the political climate of the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Rebecca Stott is a British writer and broadcaster and, until her retirement from teaching in 2021, was Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021.
Lena Dunham is an American writer, director, actress, and producer. She is the creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series Girls (2012–2017), for which she received several Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Awards. Dunham also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series. She started her career writing, directing, and starring in her semi-autobiographical independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. She has since written and directed the 2022 films Sharp Stick and Catherine Called Birdy.
Cerridwen Fallingstar, is an American Wiccan priestess, shamanic witch, and author. Since the late 1970s she has written, taught, and lectured about magic, ritual, and metaphysics, and is considered a leading authority on pagan witchcraft.
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is the ninth novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, published in May 2014.
Elizabeth Anne Fenn is an American historian. Her book Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History. She serves as the Walter S. and Lucienne Driskill chair in Western American History at University of Colorado-Boulder.
Elizabeth Esther is an American Christian author and blogger. She writes about her experiences of growing up in, and then leaving, Christian fundamentalism. Esther grew up in a fundamentalist Christian group known as the Assembly. She and her husband left the church after confronting her grandfather, and the founder of the church, about allegations of abuse. She later joined the Catholic Church.
