Exclusively representing some of our culture's most important and thought-provoking voices for lectures, readings, workshops, and conferences.
  • Russell Banks
    >> More Russell Banks Russell Banks Acclaimed Author of The Sweet Hereafter

    Russell Banks grew up in a working-class world that has played a major role in shaping his writing. Through a dozen novels...

  • Jeffrey Brown
    >> More Jeffrey Brown Jeffrey Brown PBS NewsHour Senior Correspondent

    In a career spanning more than twenty years at PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served in a variety of roles, both on and off camera. As senior...

  • A.S. Byatt
    >> More A.S. Byatt A.S. Byatt Award-winning Novelist and Short Story Writer

    British writer A.S. Byatt is the author of the international bestseller Possession and winner of the prestigious Booker Prize.

  • Michael Chabon
    >> More Michael Chabon Michael Chabon Michael Chabon Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist & Essayist

    Michael Chabon transfixed readers across the world with the imaginative acrobatics of his bestseller The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay . . .

  • Roz Chast
    >> More Roz Chast Roz Chast New Yorker Cartoonist

    Roz Chast is a brilliant interpreter of the everyday.  Her cartoons depict neuroses, hilarity, angst and domesticity and are loaded with words, objects and patterns.

  • Billy Collins
    >> More Billy Collins Billy Collins United States Poet Laureate (2001-2003)

    Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal.

  • Bernard Cooper
    >> More Bernard Cooper Bernard Cooper Award-winning Memoirist & Fiction Writer

    With his razor-sharp wit and unsparing honesty, Bernard Cooper peels back layers of the familiar, exposing the surprising truths...

  • Michael Cunningham
    >> More Michael Cunningham Michael Cunningham Pulitzer Prize-winning Author

    Michael Cunningham is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of The Hours & Home at the End of the World both of which have been made into feature films

  • Firoozeh Dumas
    >> More Firoozeh Dumas Firoozeh Dumas Bestselling Iranian-American Author

    Readers of all ages have loved her stories. Jimmy Carter called Funny in Farsi “A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love of

  • Anne Fadiman
    >> More Anne Fadiman Anne Fadiman Award-winning Author, Essayist, and Editor

    Fadiman's sensitive, incisive writing of the unbreachable gulf between the Hmong and American medical systems won her praise & awards.

  • Jonathan Franzen
    >> More Jonathan Franzen Jonathan Franzen Award-winning Novelist The Corrections & Freedom

    Franzen's The Corrections was an enormous international bestseller, nominated for nearly every major book prize in the country.

  • Alexandra Fuller
    >> More Alexandra Fuller Alexandra Fuller Journalist & Award-winning Author

    Alexandra Fuller is the author of the memoir Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood & Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness . . .

  • Ina Garten
    >> More Ina Garten Ina Garten Author of the Barefoot Contessa Books & Television Host

    In 1978, Ina Garten left her job as a nuclear budget analyst at the White House to pursue her dream of working in the food business

  • Ira Glass
    >> More Ira Glass Ira Glass Radio Producer and Host, This American Life

    Ira Glass is the host and producer of the public radio program This American Life. The show had its premiere on Chicago's public...

  • Louise Glück
    >> More Louise Glück Louise Glück United States Poet Laureate (2003–2004)

    Winner of the Pulizer Prize, poet Louise Glück was United States Poet Laureate (2003-2004)

  • Terry Gross
    >> More Terry Gross Terry Gross Award-winning NPR Host, Fresh Air

    As the host of Fresh Air, NPR’s weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, Terry Gross is heard by 4.5 millions listeners each week

  • Sara Gruen
    >> More Sara Gruen Sara Gruen Bestselling Author of Water for Elephants

    Sara Gruen's novels, Flying Changes, Riding Lessons, and Water for Elephants, explore the intimate, and often healing, space between human and non-human

  • Daniel Handler
    >> More Daniel Handler Daniel Handler Bestselling Author, (A.K.A Lemony Snicket)

    Writers of the phenomenally popular Lemony Snicket books for children with over 53 million copies in print, Daniel Handler is also the bestselling novelist . . .

  • Robert Hass
    >> More Robert Hass Robert Hass United States Poet Laureate (1995-1997)

    Robert Hass is, first of all, a poet of great eloquence, clarity, and force, whose work is rooted in the landscapes of his native Northern California.

  • Seamus Heaney
    >> More Seamus Heaney Seamus Heaney Nobel Laureate in Literature

    Acclaimed Irish writer, Seamus Heaney's body of work is vast and includes a mix of poetry, prose, criticism, theatre and translation.

  • Jane Hirshfield
    >> More Jane Hirshfield Jane Hirshfield Prize-winning Poet, Translator, and Essayist

    Jane Hirshfield’s poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence—desire and loss, impermanence and beauty...

  • David Henry Hwang
    >> More David Henry Hwang David Henry Hwang Playwright (M. Butterfly) & Screenwriter

    Throughout his career, playwright David Henry Hwang has explored the complexities of forging Eastern and Western cultures in a contemporary America

  • Miranda July
    >> More Miranda July Miranda July Filmmaker, Artist & Writer

    Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or. Miranda July’s most recent film is The Future (2011), which she wrote and directed and stars in.

  • Elizabeth Kolbert
    >> More Elizabeth Kolbert Elizabeth Kolbert Journalist and Author

    Elizabeth Kolbert traveled from Alaska to Greenland, and visited top scientists, to get to the heart of the debate over global warming.

  • Tony Kushner
    >> More Tony Kushner Tony Kushner Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright

    Tony Kushner forever changed the face of modern drama with his two-part prize-winning opus, Angels in America.

  • Jhumpa Lahiri
    >> More Jhumpa Lahiri Jhumpa Lahiri Pulitzer Prize-winning Author

    Jhumpa Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize for Interpreter of Maladies her debut story collection that explores issues of love and identity among immigrants

  • Anne Lamott
    >> More Anne Lamott Anne Lamott Best-selling Author of Traveling Mercies

    Anne Lamott writes & speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus -- with self-effacing humor & ruthless honesty . . .

  • Jaron Lanier
    >> More Jaron Lanier Jaron Lanier Scientist, author, musician and artist

    Jaron Lanier is a 21st century Renaissance Man whose unique blend of science and the arts allows him a unique perspective.

  • Fran Lebowitz
    >> More Fran Lebowitz Fran Lebowitz Author, Journalist & Social Observer

    Purveyor of a knowing, urban cool, the witty chronicler of the ”me decade” and the cultural satirist whom many call the heir to Dorothy Parker

  • Barry Lopez
    >> More Barry Lopez Barry Lopez National Book Award Winner & Nature Writer

    To read Barry Lopez is to commune with a deep thinker. His writings have frequently been compared to those of Henry David Thoreau...

  • Armistead Maupin
    >> More Armistead Maupin Armistead Maupin Acclaimed Novelist: Tales of the City Series

    Though Armistead Maupin was one of the first of a new breed of openly gay authors, his appeal has always resided in his inclusiveness...

  • Frances Mayes
    >> More Frances Mayes Frances Mayes Bestselling Author Under the Tuscan Sun

    Frances Mayes is the author of the now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun – a New York Times bestseller for more than 2 years and also a beloved film . . .

  • Alexander McCall Smith
    >> More Alexander McCall Smith Alexander McCall Smith Beloved & Acclaimed Scottish Novelist

    Alexander McCall Smith's international bestselling series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency have won both critical and popular acclaim for their humor

  • W.S. Merwin
    >> More W.S. Merwin W.S. Merwin United States Poet Laureate (2010-2011)

    In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most respected voices . . .

  • Anchee Min
    >> More Anchee Min Anchee Min Chinese/American Bestselling Author

    Author of the memoir Red Azalea Anchee Min recounts her childhood in comunist China -- a story that has been compared to The Diary of Anne Frank

  • Azar Nafisi
    >> More Azar Nafisi Azar Nafisi Iranian/American Bestselling Author

    Azar Nafisi is best-known as the author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books which...

  • Marion Nestle
    >> More Marion Nestle Marion Nestle Author and Nutrition expert

    Marion Nestle is a consumer activist, nutritionist, award-winning author, and academic who writes about the politics of food and dietary choice.

  • Kathleen Norris
    >> More Kathleen Norris Kathleen Norris Bestselling Writer on Faith & Spirituality

    Exploring the spiritual life, her work is intimate & historical, rich in poetry & meditations, brimming with exasperation & reverence, deeply grounded in .

  • Naomi Shihab Nye
    >> More Naomi Shihab Nye Naomi Shihab Nye Award-winning Poet, Writer, & Educator

    Palestinian/American writer, Naomi Shihab Nye is a “wandering poet" whose writing reaffirms our shared humanity . . .

  • Sharon Olds
    >> More Sharon Olds Sharon Olds

    Sharon Olds is the author of eight volumes of poetry. Her poetry, says Michael Ondaatje, is “pure fire in the hands,” and...

  • Mary Oliver
    >> More Mary Oliver Mary Oliver Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet & Essayist

    Mary Oliver’s poetry, with her lyrical connection to the natural world, has firmly established her in the highest realm of writers working today

  • Michael Ondaatje
    >> More Michael Ondaatje Michael Ondaatje Booker Prize-winning Novelist

    Michael Ondaatje is one of the world’s foremost writers – author of the international bestseller, The English Patient . . .

  • Suzan-Lori Parks
    >> More Suzan-Lori Parks Suzan-Lori Parks Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright

    Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most exciting voices in the American Theatre . . .

  • Robert Pinsky
    >> More Robert Pinsky Robert Pinsky United States Poet Laureate (1997–2000)

    Robert Pinsky’s first two terms as United States Poet Laureate were marked by such visible dynamism, and such national...

  • Michael Pollan
    >> More Michael Pollan Michael Pollan Bestselling Author In Defense of Food

    With his two bestsellers, Omnivore's Dilemma & In Defense of Food Michael Pollan has captured the attention of those interested in healthier . . .

  • David Rakoff
    >> More David Rakoff David Rakoff Public Radio Humorist & Commentator

    The wry and the heartfelt join in David Rakoff's prose to resurrect that most-neglected of literary virtues: wit.

  • Frank Rich
    >> More Frank Rich Frank Rich Author & Journalist

    Frank Rich is one of our most intrepid observers of American Life.  As Writer-at-Large at New York magazine, he fearlessly tackles . . .

  • Luis J. Rodriguez
    >> More Luis J. Rodriguez Luis J. Rodriguez Award-winning Poet, Activist, and Author

    Luis J. Rodriguez (author of Always Running) is convinced that a writer can change the world. Indeed it is through education and the power of words...

  • Kay Ryan
    >> More Kay Ryan Kay Ryan United States Poet Laureate (2008-2010)

    Kay Ryan’s intensely strange, yet humorous and musical poems have been compared to those of Emily Dickinson.

  • Mark Salzman
    >> More Mark Salzman Mark Salzman Acclaimed Novelist & Memoirist

    Mark Salzman is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction author who has written on a variety of subjects, from a graceful novel...

  • Dr. Robert Sapolsky
    >> More Dr. Robert Sapolsky Dr. Robert Sapolsky Science & Nature Writer & Stress Expert

    His perspective on the human condition comes from the ease with which he combines his insights from the field with his findings as a neuroscientist.

  • Marjane Satrapi
    >> More Marjane Satrapi Marjane Satrapi Bestselling Artist & Author of Persepolis

    Iranian artist and filmmaker, Marjane Satrapi is the creator of "Persepolis" -- both a bestselling comix memoir & also an award winning film.

  • Orville Schell
    >> More Orville Schell Orville Schell Author and Journalist

    While best known as one of the country's most well informed and thoughtful observers on China, Orville Schell has also been...

  • Eric Schlosser
    >> More Eric Schlosser Eric Schlosser Bestselling Author and Journalist
    Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness, and Food, Inc.  

    Eric Schlosser is a bestselling author and journalist. His writings about food, health, and the business of eating have changed the way America eats.

  • Alice Sebold
    >> More Alice Sebold Alice Sebold Bestselling Author of The Lovely Bones

    Rarely has an author had such an impact on international literature with her first novel, especially when it focuses on the dark subjects...

  • David Sedaris
    >> More David Sedaris David Sedaris Bestselling Author & New Yorker Contributor

    David Sedaris has become one of America’s pre-eminent & bestselling humor writers. His NPR audio essays are considered classics.

  • Scott Simon
    >> More Scott Simon Scott Simon NPR Host, Weekend Edition & Author

    Scott Simon brings a well-traveled perspective to his role as host of Weekend Edition Saturday from Ground Zero in NYC to ground zero in Kabul . . .

  • Zadie Smith
    >> More Zadie Smith Zadie Smith Prize-winning Author of White Teeth and On Beauty

    Novelist Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. Her acclaimed first novel, White Teeth (2000), is a vibrant portrait of contemporary multicultural London, told through the story of three ethnically diverse families. The book won a number of awards and prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award...

  • Stephen Sondheim
    >> More Stephen Sondheim Stephen Sondheim Playwright, Composer, & Lyricist

    The composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim is the most important artist to work in the American musical theater over the past half-century.

  • Art Spiegelman
    >> More Art Spiegelman Art Spiegelman Pulitzer Prize-winning Artist/Illustrator: MAUS

    With his memoir MAUS, Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves.

  • Amy Tan
    >> More Amy Tan Amy Tan Acclaimed International Bestselling Author

    Amy Tan is the author of many acclaimed & beloved novels, including The Joy Luck Club which is also a feature film . . .

  • Sarah Vowell
    >> More Sarah Vowell Sarah Vowell Bestselling Author: The Wordy Shipmates

    She has written documentaries & monologues about everything from the Cherokee Trail of Tears, presidential libraries, Frank Sinatra to more personal . . .

  • Chris Ware
    >> More Chris Ware Chris Ware Award-winning Cartoonist and Author

    Ware's art is eclectic in its influences, and largely reflects his love of early 20th century American aesthetics in both cartooning & graphic design

  • Terry Tempest Williams
    >> More Terry Tempest Williams Terry Tempest Williams Conservationist, Writer & Activist  

    Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life

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Anne Lamott

NOTEWORTHY:

Anne Lamott's Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son on New York TImes Bestseller List

Anne Lamott doesn’t try to sugar-coat sadness, frustration and disappointment, but tells her stories with honesty, compassion and a pureness of voice.  As she says, “I have a lot of hope and a lot of faith and I struggle to communicate that.”  Her recently released book, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son,  is a New York Times Bestseller.

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Alexander McCall Smith

NOTEWORTHY:

Alexander McCall Smith's The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection a bestseller

Alexander McCall Smith, referred to as our new P.G. Wodehouse, is best known for his internationally acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which rapidly rose to the top of the bestseller lists throughout the world. The recently published thirteenth book in the series, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection is a New York Times Bestseller.

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Firoozeh Dumas

NOTEWORTHY:

Firoozeh Dumas' Funny in Farsi released in Iran

Firoozeh grew up listening to her father, a former Fulbright Scholar, recount the many colorful stories of his life in both Iran and America. In 2001, with no prior writing experience, Firoozeh decided to write her stories as a gift for her two children. Funny in Farsi was on the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists and was a finalist for the PEN/USA award in 2004 and a finalist in 2005 for an Audie Award for best audio book. The book was translated by Mohammad Soleimani Nia and has been published in Iran.

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Mark Salzman

NOTEWORTHY:

Mark Salzman publishes The Man in the Empty Boat

Mark Salzman is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction author who has written on a variety of subjects, from a graceful novel about a Carmelite nun’s ecstatic visions and crisis of faith to a compelling memoir about growing up a misfit in a Connecticut suburb – clearly displaying a range that transcends genre. His new work is the non-fiction title The Man in the Empty Boat, a moving memoir of love and family, loss and spiritual yearning.

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Frances Mayes

NOTEWORTHY:

Frances Mayes presents The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from My Italian Kitchen

A widely published poet and essayist, Frances Mayes has written numerous books of poetry, including Sunday in Another Country, After Such Pleasures, The Arts of Fire, Hours, The Book of Summer, and Ex Voto.  When she saw Bramasole, a neglected, 200-year old Tuscan farmhouse nestled in five overgrown acres, it was love at first sight. Out of that instant infatuation have come five marvelous, and hugely popular, books. Frances's most recent book, co-authored with Edward Mayes, is The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from My Italian Kitchen.

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Roz Chast

NOTEWORTHY:

Roz Chast awarded a New York City Literary Honor

Cartoonist Roz Chast is a brilliant interpreter of the everyday.  Her cartoons depict neuroses, hilarity, angst and domesticity and are loaded with words, objects and patterns. She has recently been awarded a New York City Literary Honor, given to living writers whose work and lives have been informed by New York City, as a way of highlighting its place as home to the publishing industry and an inspiration to authors. Her most recent book is What I Hate: From A – Z.

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Marion Nestle

NOTEWORTHY:

Marion Nestle's Why Calories Count being published April 2012

Marion Nestle is a consumer activist, nutritionist, award-winning author, and academic who specializes in the politics of food and dietary choice. Her new book, co-written with malden Nesheim, Why Calories Count: from Science to Politics explains what calories are, both biologically and politically, and how easy it is to eat too many of them.

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Terry Tempest Williams

NOTEWORTHY:

Terry Tempest Williams' new book, When Women Were Birds, is available now

Williams, like her writing, cannot be categorized.  She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues, been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda. Her most recent book, When Women Were Birds, was released in Spring 2012.

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Anne Fadiman

NOTEWORTHY:

Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down available in 15th anniversary edtion

Anne Fadiman is an author, essayist, editor, and teacher. The 15th anniversary edtion of her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down has just been released. She has recently been awarded the Richard H. Brodhead Prize for Teaching Excellence from Yale University.

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Daniel Handler

NOTEWORTHY:

Daniel Handler contributes to the New American Haggadah as Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler has recently contributed to the New American Haggadah, just published by Little, Brown and Company, a new edition of the Passover narrative. Handler/Snicket contributed a commentary called "Playground," filled with practical and humorous wisdom. Handler is the author of the literary novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and, most recently, Adverbs. Under the name Lemony Snicket he has also written a sequence of books for children, known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which have sold more than 60 million copies and were the basis of a feature film.

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A.S. Byatt

NOTEWORTHY:

A.S. Byatt Publishes Her Latest Book, Ragnarok - the End of the Gods

A.S. Byatt  has always been a self-described 'greedy reader', who weaves her many interests — biology, history, philosophy among them — into her work. The results are novels with, as she has often stated, “the whole world in them;” books that teem with characters and ideas, books in which reading and writing usually prove a matter of life, death, and freedom. Byatt's most recent book is Ragnarok - the End of the Gods.

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  • Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son by Anne Lamott
    Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son by Anne Lamott
  • The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from My Italian Kitchen by Frances Mayes
    The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from My Italian Kitchen by Frances Mayes
  • The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith
    The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith
  • Why Calories Count: from Science to Politics by Marion Nestle
    Why Calories Count: from Science to Politics by Marion Nestle
  • The Man in the Empty Boat by Mark Salzman
    The Man in the Empty Boat by Mark Salzman
  • Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen
    Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen
  • When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
    When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
  • Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
    Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
  • Swan by Mary Oliver
    Swan by Mary Oliver
  • Cocktail Hour Under the Sea of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
    Cocktail Hour Under the Sea of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
  • Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
    Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
  • Look I Made a Hat by Stephen Sondheim
    Look I Made a Hat by Stephen Sondheim
  • Ragnorak - the End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt
    Ragnorak - the End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt
  • Human Chain by Seamus Heaney
    Human Chain by Seamus Heaney
  • Half Empty by David Rakoff
    Half Empty by David Rakoff
  • Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
    Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
  • Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
    Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
  • What Light Can Do by Robert Hass
    What Light Can Do by Robert Hass
  • Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Daniel Handler
    Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Daniel Handler
  • Robert Pinsky: Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky
    Robert Pinsky: Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky
  • Building Stories by Chris Ware
    Building Stories by Chris Ware
  • Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
    Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
  • Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan
    Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan
  • A Conspiracy of Friends / a Corduroy Mansions novel by Alexander McCall Smith
    A Conspiracy of Friends / a Corduroy Mansions novel by Alexander McCall Smith