Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer and astrobiologist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage", …

Joseph Aaron Carnahan (born May 9, 1969) is an American independent film director best known for his films "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane", "Narc" and "Smokin' Aces". He is the brother of screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan. Born in Delaware, raised in Detroit, Michigan and Sacramento, California, Carnahan became employed in the promotional department of Channel 31, a local Sacramento television station, …

Nicole Ari Parker Kodjoe, also known as Nikki Kodjoe (born Nicole Ari Parker on October 7, 1970 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an African American actress, who was briefly a model. Parker is best known for playing the tough but compassionate attorney Teri Joseph in the Showtime television series "Soul Food", which was based on the 1997 film of the same name. In the series, she has showcased her singing voice in several episodes, …

Mariette Hartley (born Mary Loretta Hartley on June 21, 1940, in Weston, Connecticut) is a prolific American character actress. She began her career in her teens as a stage actress, coached and mentored by the noted Eva Le Gallienne. Her film career began with "Ride the High Country", a classic western with actors Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea; and directed by Sam Peckinpah. She has worked with Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, …

Pat Conroy (born October 26, 1945 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an Irish-American, New York Times bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. He was one of seven children born to Marine Colonel Donald Conroy, of Chicago and the former Frances "Peggy" Peek of Georgia. Conroy's stories have been heavily influenced by his upbringing and by tragedies in his family over the years. His father, a military pilot who flew nuclear weapons, …

H. G. "Buzz" Bissinger (b. November 1, 1954, in New York City) is an American journalist. In 1987, while writing for "The Philadelphia Inquirer" he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his story on corruption in the Philadelphia court system. He is also the author of the article "Shattered Glass," featured in the magazine "Vanity Fair," where he is a contributing editor; the article was later adapted for the 2003 film of the same name.

Belle de Jour is the "nom de plume" of a person who claims to have been a London call girl or high class prostitute. Under this banner she maintains a successful blog, "Belle de Jour: diary of a London call girl" which by 2003 had achieved selection by "The Guardian" as their blog of the year and has given rise to two books published in both the UK and US. A television series based on the first book was in development with Channel 4 in the UK, …

Eliades Ochoa is a Cuban guitarist and singer born in Loma de la Avispa, Songo La Maya in the east of the country near Santiago on June 22 1946. He began playing the guitar when he was six and in 1978 he joined Cuarteto Patria, a band that has played since 1940. His roots are in "guajira" (Cuban country music) and he still wears his trademark cowboy hat. He plays the tres, and also a variant called "cuatro" (with two additional strings).

Alice Hoffman (born March 16 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1995 novel "Practical Magic", which was made into a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships.

Alexandra Kingston (born March 11, 1963, in Epsom, Surrey) is an English actress best known for her role as Elizabeth Corday on the NBC medical drama "ER". Kingston grew up in Epsom, on the outskirts of London, the eldest of three daughters of a butcher and his German wife. Her mother's younger brother is actor Walter Renneisen. She was inspired to pursue acting by one of her teachers at the all-girls grammar school she attended as a child.

Christopher Connelly (born September 8, 1941, Wichita, Kansas; died December 7, 1988, Burbank, California) was an American actor best known for his role as Norman Harrington in the primetime soap opera "Peyton Place". He stayed with the series during its entire five-year run (1964-1969). Connelly's other series venture was not as successful. In 1974 he starred in the series "Paper Moon", with a young Jodie Foster playing his daughter.

Ralph Phillip Klein (born November 1, 1942) was the premier of the Canadian province of Alberta and leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives from 1992 until his retirement in 2006. His tenure as premier ended when the Alberta Progressive Conservatives' new leader, Ed Stelmach, assumed office December 14, 2006, exactly fourteen years after Klein first became Premier.

Sol Yurick (1925 -) is an American novelist. He was born to a working class family of politically active Jewish immigrants. At the age of 14, Yurick became disillusioned with politics after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He enlisted during World War II, where he trained as a surgical technician. He studied at New York University after the war, majoring in literature. After graduation, he took a job with the welfare department as a social investigator, …

Ferenc Molnár was one of the greatest Hungarian dramatists and novelists of the 20th century. His Americanized name is Franz Molnar. He emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazi persecution of Hungarian Jews during World War II. As a novelist, Molnár is remembered principally for "The Paul Street Boys" which tells the story of two rival gangs of youths in Budapest. The novel is a classic of youth literature, …

Kimberly Willis Holt (born 1960) is an American chidren's book writer, most famous for writing "When Zachary Beaver Came to Town", which won the National Book Award. That book was made into a film of the same name. She was born to a US Navy chief in Pensacola, Florida and currently lives in Amarillo, Texas, but spent most of her childhood in Forest Hill, Louisiana. That theme is popularized by her first novel, My Louisiana Sky.

Craig Harrison is a teacher, author and playwright, best known for the science fiction novel "The Quiet Earth", first published in 1981 and later adapted as a screenplay for the film of the same name, directed by Geoff Murphy and released in 1985. Other notable works include the novel "Broken October", which explores a Māori rebellion in a future New Zealand.

Hugh Antoine d'Arcy was a French-born poet and writer and a pioneer executive in the American motion picture industry. Hugh Antoine d'Arcy is most famous for his 1887 poem "The Face on the Barroom Floor," a sorrowful tale of a painter who takes to drink after his lover deserts him for the fair-haired lad in one of his portraits. Keystone Studios would use the poem as the basis for a 1914 film of the same name starring Charlie Chaplin.

Yevgeny Valerianovich Samoilov was a Russian actor who gained prominence in youthful heroic parts and was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1974. He is the father of Tatiana Samoilova. Samoilov is not related to the famous Samoilov family that dominated the Maly Theatre in the 19th century. He was educated in Leningrad, starting his career at a local theatre. In 1934 he was noticed by Vsevolod Meyerhold who invited him to join his own troupe in Moscow.

Dr. Sara Sefchovich is a Mexican writer She studied sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), earning a master's degree in 1987 and a doctorate degree in 2005 in History of Mexico. Later, she also did research at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales ("Institute of Social Research") of the institution. She has written articles for the magazines "Fem", "Revista Mexicana de Sociología", "Cuadernos de Comunicación", …