Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years.
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
John Tracy Kidder is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his The Soul of a New Machine (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has received praise and awards for other works, including his biography of Paul Farmer, a doctor and anthropologist, titled Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003).
Ted Morgan is a French–American biographer, journalist, and historian.
The great bison belt is a tract of rich grassland that ran from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico around 9000 BC. The great bison belt was supported by spring and early summer rainfall that allowed short grasses to grow. These grasses retain their moisture at the roots which allowed for grazing ungulates such as bison to find high-quality nutritious food in autumn.
Samrat Upadhyay is a Nepalese writer, born in 1963, who writes in English. Upadhyay is a professor of creative writing and has previously served as the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University. He is the first Nepali-born fiction writer writing in English to be published in the West. He was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, and came to the United States in 1984 at the age of twenty-one. He lives with his wife and daughter in Bloomington, Indiana.
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is a Chinese American writer. She previously taught writing and literature in the Graduate MFA Writing program at Otis College of Art and Design until 2015. Bynum is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. Her brother is musician Taylor Ho Bynum.
Jabari Asim is an author, poet, playwright, and associate professor of writing, literature and publishing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He's the former Editor-in-Chief of The Crisis magazine, a journal of politics, ideas and culture published by the NAACP and founded by historian and social activist W. E. B. Du Bois in 1910. In February 2019 he was named Emerson College's inaugural Elma Lewis ’43 Distinguished Fellow in the Social Justice Center.
Mariner Books, an imprint of HMH Books, was established in 1997 as a publisher of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in paperback. Mariner is also the publisher of the Harvest imprint backlist, formerly published by Harcourt Brace/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
The Ambassador Book Award (1986–2011) was presented annually by the English-Speaking Union. It recognized important literary and non-fiction works that contributed to the understanding and interpretation of American life and culture. Winners of the award were considered literary ambassadors who provide, in the best contemporary English, an important window on America to the rest of the world. A panel of judges selected books out of new works in the fields of fiction, biography, autobiography, current affairs, American studies and poetry.
Timothy P. Egan is an American author, journalist and op-ed columnist for The New York Times, writing from a liberal perspective.
HP Newquist is an American author whose books cover a wide range of topics, from medicine and music to technology and terror. He has also worked as an editor, musician, industry analyst, and video director.
Gordon Grice is an American science writer and horror writer.
Dale Peterson is an American author who writes about scientific and natural history subjects.
The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".
Molly Caldwell Crosby is a journalist and author of three literary nonfiction books: The American Plague, Asleep, and The Great Pearl Heist.
Marcia Aldrich is an American author specializing in literary non-fiction, memoir and personal writing. Her book Companion to an Untold Story won the 2011 AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction. She has written personal essays which have been published in Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Witness, Arts and Letters, Northwest Review, Brevity, and Seneca Review, among others. Fifteen of her essays have been selected as Notable Essays of the year in the Best American Essays series.
Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life (2015) is a book written by Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and Naval Officer, that consists of a series of letters written to a friend struggling with life after military service. The letters serve a guidebook for his friend, Zach Walker, and draw on Greitens’ personal experiences and knowledge of ancient and modern philosophers.
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American writer and clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma, addiction, and cross-cultural behavior. Her writings and poetry cover aspects of identity and the effects of displacement, particularly within the Palestinian diaspora. She is also known for acting in the short films, I Say Dust and Tallahassee, directed by Darine Hotait.
