Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries. Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form.
Nicholas Peter John Hornby is an English writer and lyricist. He is best known for his memoir Fever Pitch (1992) and novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, all of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby's work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists. His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide as of 2018. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Hornby was named the 29th most influential person in British culture. He has received two Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for An Education (2009), and Brooklyn (2015).
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.
David James Pelzer is an American author of several autobiographical and self-help books. His 1995 memoir of childhood abuse, A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive, was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for several years, and in 5 years had sold at least 1.6 million copies. The book brought Pelzer fame, and has also been a source of controversy, with accusations of several events being fabricated coming from both family members and journalists.
Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is an American literary journal, founded in 1998, typically containing short stories, reportage, and illustrations. Some issues also include poetry, comic strips, and novellas. The Quarterly Concern is published by McSweeney's based in San Francisco and it has been edited by Dave Eggers. The journal is notable in that it has no fixed format, and changes its publishing style from issue to issue, unlike more conventional journals and magazines.
Judith "Judy" Yung was a librarian, community activist, historian and professor emerita in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specialized in oral history, women's history, and Asian American history. She died on December 14, 2020, in San Francisco, where she had returned in 2018.
Vendela Vida is an American novelist, journalist, editor, screenplay writer, and educator. She is the author of multiple books, has worked as a writing teacher, and is a founder and editor of The Believer magazine.
Gina Berriault, was an American novelist and short story writer.
Nínive Clements Calegari is an educator in the United States. Following ten years of classroom experience in public schools, she became an author and founded a national literacy program, 826 National. She also founded The Teacher Salary Project. Currently she is the CEO of Enterprise for Youth, an organization that empowers young people to prepare for and discover career opportunities in the San Francisco area through a three-phase program model of job-readiness training, paid internships with college credit, and ongoing career development and networking support.
Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, two story collections and a book of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. He spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.
Jewelle Lydia Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women's experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.
826 Valencia is a non-profit organization in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, United States, dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. It was the basis for the 826 National organization, which has centers on the United States with the same goal.
Carolyn Cooke is an American short story writer and novelist.
Laurie Lola Vollen is a scholar and human rights activist. She specializes in the repercussions of large-scale human rights abuses.
Kevin Killian was an American poet, author, editor, and playwright, primarily of LGBT literature. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for Poetry in 2009.
David Avram "Dave" Isay is an American radio producer and founder of Sound Portraits Productions. He is also the founder of StoryCorps, an ongoing oral history project. He is the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including six Peabody Awards and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. He is the author/editor of numerous books that grew out of his public radio documentary work.
Adam Clay "A.C." Thompson is an investigative journalist, producer, and staff reporter with ProPublica. His work has appeared on the PBS series Frontline. His stories, many of which examine the criminal justice system, have helped lead to the exoneration of two innocent San Francisco men sentenced to life in prison and the prosecution of seven New Orleans police officers.
Brenda Wong Aoki is an American playwright, actor and storyteller. She creates monodramas rooted in traditional storytelling, dance movement, and music. Aoki's work combines Eastern and Western narratives and theatrical traditions such as noh, kyogen, commedia dell'arte, modern dance, Japanese drumming, and American jazz. Most of her performances express themes of history, mixed race, home, gender, and mythology. Aoki is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. Aoki and her husband Mark Izu, an Emmy-winning jazz music composer, are the founders of First Voice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit arts organization.
The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group (HoMBRG) is an academic organisation specialising in recording and publishing the oral history of twentieth and twenty-first century biomedicine. It was established in 1990 as the Wellcome Trust's History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group, and reconstituted in October 2010 as part of the School of History at Queen Mary University of London.
Mimi Lok is a British-Chinese author, editor, and educator. She is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, A PEN America Award, and a California Book Award for Fiction. She is also the founder of Voice of Witness, an award-winning human rights and oral history nonprofit organization focused on amplifying marginalized voices through a book series and a national education program.
