The World According to Garp is John Irving's fourth novel, about a man born out of wedlock to a feminist leader who grows up to be a writer. Published in 1978, the book was a bestseller for several years. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979, and its first paperback edition won the Award the following year.
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
Jenny Diski FRSL was an English writer. She had a troubled childhood, but was taken in and mentored by the novelist Doris Lessing; she lived in Lessing's house for four years. Diski was educated at University College London, and worked as a teacher during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Christina's World is a 1948 painting by American painter Andrew Wyeth and one of the best-known American paintings of the mid-20th century. It is a tempera work done in a realist style, depicting a woman semi-reclining on the ground in a treeless, mostly tawny field, looking up at a gray house on the horizon; a barn and various other small outbuildings are adjacent to the house. It is held by the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
Lee Smith is an American fiction writer who often incorporates her background from the American South in her works. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. Her novel The Last Girls was listed on the New York Times bestseller's list and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.
Rachel Lyman Field was an American novelist, poet, and children's fiction writer. She is best known for her work Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. Field also won a National Book Award, Newbery Honor award and two of her books are on the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list.
Tess Gerritsen is the pseudonym of Terry Gerritsen, an American novelist and retired general physician.
Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her nine novels.
Claire Messud is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children (2006).
Sophie Hannah is a British poet and novelist.
Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright. She began her career writing short stories and plays, which were often censored by the Soviet government, and following perestroika, published a number of well-respected works of prose.
Porochista Khakpour is an Iranian American novelist, essayist, and journalist.
Katherine Sherar Pannill Center is an American author of contemporary fiction.
Mathinna was an Aboriginal Tasmanian girl, who was adopted and later abandoned by the Governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin.
Mameve S. Medwed was an American novelist. She was the author of Mail, Host Family, The End of an Error, How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life, and Of Men and Their Mothers.
Julianna Baggott is a novelist, essayist, and poet who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. She is an associate professor at Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts. She is a 2013 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Heather Lind is an American actress. She is known for her portrayal of Anna Strong in the AMC series Turn: Washington's Spies. She is the twin sister of actress Christina Bennett Lind.
Pam Jenoff is an American author, lawyer, and professor of law at Rutgers University. She writes both love stories and historical novels, some of which have been nominated for awards and many of which have been bestsellers. She is still currently writing and lives with her 3 children and husband in New Jersey. Her books are highly recommended and have won prizes before.
Valeria Luiselli is a Mexican-American author. She is the author of the book of essays Sidewalks and the novel Faces in the Crowd, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Luiselli's 2015 novel The Story of My Teeth was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Best Translated Book Award, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Fiction, and she was awarded the Premio Metropolis Azul in Montreal, Quebec. Luiselli's books have been translated into more than 20 languages, with her work appearing in publications including, The New York Times, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New Yorker. Her book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Luiselli's 2019 novel, Lost Children Archive won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Helen Schulman is an American novelist, short story, non-fiction, and screenwriter. Her fifth novel, This Beautiful Life, was an international bestseller, and was chosen in the 100 Notable Books of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review.
