- Queen Pen
Queen Pen, is an American female rapper. Walters' music career started with help from Teddy Riley, music producer and member of the R&B group Blackstreet in the mid 1990s. She was a featured rapper, along with Dr. Dre, on Blackstreet's 1996 hit, "No Diggity". Her biggest hit as a lead rapper was "Party Ain’t A Party" (featuring Lost Boyz) from her debut album. She also gained notice from her song "Girlfriend" (featuring Me'Shell NdegeOcello), … - Sam Harris
Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American writer. He is the author of "The End of Faith" (2004), which was inspired by the September 11, 2001 attacks, and which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2006), a rejoinder to the criticism the first book attracted. His articles have appeared in "Newsweek", "The Los Angeles Times", "The Times" of London, and "The Boston Globe". - John Harris
John Harris (1820 - 1884) was a Cornish poet. Harris was born and raised in a two-bedroom cottage atop the slopes of Bolenowe Carn, a small Cornish village. At age twelve, he was sent to work at the Dolcoath mine, an immense maze thousands of feet deep. Amazingly, he managed to combine a life of painful labour with the consistent production of powerful and moving poems, celebrating his native landscape around Carn Brea and the scenic splendors of Land's End and the Lizard. - Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist and human rights activist well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and the Putin administration. She held Russian and US citizenship. She was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building on 7 October 2006. Politkovskaya made her name reporting from Chechnya for Russia's liberal newspaper, "Novaya Gazeta". The BBC described her writing as "often polemical, … - Andrew Vachss
Andrew Henry Vachss (born 1942) is an American crime fiction author, child protection consultant, and attorney exclusively representing children and youths. He is also a founder and national advisory board member of PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children. Vachss's last name is pronounced to rhyme with "tax". He is a native New Yorker. - Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, CBE (born August 27, 1935) is a biographer, born in London and educated at Eton College. From 1985 to 1988 he was the president of the English branch of PEN. He is married to the author Margaret Drabble. Awards include the 2001 Heywood Hill Literary Prize and the 2005 David Cohen British Literature Prize. Holroyd was knighted in the 2007 New Years' Honours List. - Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie (born September 8, 1947) is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. She holds an undergraduate degree from American University and a masters degree from the University of Connecticut. - Alfred Kerr
Alfred Kerr, born Alfred Kempner, was an influential German-Jewish theatre critic and essayist, nicknamed the "Kulturpapst" ("Culture Pope"). Kerr was born into a prosperous family in Breslau, Silesia, taking the surname Kerr in 1887, and making the change officially in 1909. He studied literature in Berlin with Erich Schmidt. He subsequently was a reviewer for numerous newspapers and magazines. - Moris Farhi
(Musa) Moris Farhi MBE (born 1935, Ankara, Turkey) has been vice-president of International PEN since 2001. "Education:" Robert Academy '54, Istanbul (BA), RADA. Mr Farhi is an author. He was chairman of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN in Britain, 1994-97, and the corresponding committee of International PEN 1997-2000. He was appointed an MBE in 2001. He has written several novels, including Children of the Rainbow and Journey through the Wilderness. - Marie Luise Kaschnitz
Marie Luise Kaschnitz (born Marie Luise von Holzing-Berslett on January 31, 1901 in Karlsruhe; died October 10, 1974 in Rome) was a German short story writer, novelist, essayist and poet. She is considered to be one of the leading post-war German poets. She married an archaeologist named Guido Freiherr Von Kaschnitz-Weinberg ("The Mediterranean Foundations of Ancient Art") in 1925 and travelled with him on archaeological expeditions. - Paul William Roberts
Paul William Roberts is a Canadian writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Born in Wales and educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he gained a second in English Language and Literature, Roberts moved permanently to Canada in 1980. He lived for several years prior to this in India, where he taught at Bangalore University and studied Sanskrit at the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. While working on his first novel, "The Palace of Fears", … - Mehmed Uzun
Mehmed Uzun, is a contemporary Kurdish writer and novelist. He was born in Siverek, Urfa in Turkey in 1953. Although Kurdish was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in his mother tongue. As a writer, he has achieved a great deal towards shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. From 1977 to 2005 he lived in exile in Sweden as a political refugee. - William Auld
William Auld (6 November, 1924 - 11 September, 2006) was a Scottish author and the deputy director of a grammar school. He began to study Esperanto in 1937, but only became active in the propagation of the language in 1947, and from then on wrote many works in Esperanto. Auld edited various magazines and reviews, including "Esperanto en Skotlando" (1949-1955), "Esperanto" (1955-1958, 1961-1962), of "Monda Kulturo" (1962-1963), … - Franklin Booth
Franklin Booth, born 1874 and raised in Indiana, was an artist who worked mainly with ink and a pen. His works are characterised by thousands of lines, whose careful positioning next to one another determine the density and shade of that particular region. His unusual technique was the result of a misunderstanding: As a boy, Booth scrupulously copied magazine illustrations which he thought were pen and ink drawings. In fact, they were wood engravings. - Deborah Moggach
Deborah Moggach is a British writer, born Deborah Hough on 28 June 1948. She has written fifteen novels to date, including "The Ex-Wives", "Tulip Fever", and, most recently, "These Foolish Things". She has adapted many of her novels as TV dramas and has also written several film scripts, including the BAFTA-nominated screenplay for "Pride & Prejudice." She has also written two collections of short stories and a stage play. - Wolfdietrich Schnurre
Wolfdietrich Schnurre was a German writer. Schnurre was an important literate of post-war West Germany. Apart from numberous short stories he also wrote novels, tales, diaries, poems, radio plays and (beginning in the 1960s) children's books which he partly illustrated himself. Schnurre grew up in Frankfurt before his father, a librarian, moved to Berlin in 1928. Here Schnurre attended a socialist elementary school and grammar school. - Frances Fitzgerald
Frances FitzGerald (born October 21,1940) is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her book, "Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam" (1972), which was met with great acclaim when it was published, and remains one of the most notable books about the Vietnam War. FitzGerald was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for the book. - İsmail Beşikçi
İsmail Beşikçi is a Turkish scholar. He is a PEN Honorary Member. He has served 17 years in prison on propaganda charges stemming from his writings about the Kurdish population in Turkey. He was charged for over 100 years but released from jail in 1999. - David Marshall Grant
David Marshall Grant (born June 21, 1955, in Westport, Connecticut) is an American actor and playwright. Immediately after graduating from the Yale University School of Drama, his first paying job was as Richard Gere's lover in the Broadway play "Bent". As an actor, he is most notable for his portrayal of Joe Pitt in the first Broadway production of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America". - Nicholas Jose
Nicholas Jose (b. 1952) is an Australian novelist. Born in London, England, to Australian parents, Nicholas Jose grew up mostly in Adelaide, South Australia. He was educated at the Australian National University and Oxford University. He has traveled extensively, particularly in China, where he worked from 1986 to 1990. He was President of Sydney PEN from 2002 to 2005 and currently holds the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. - Nasser Zarafshan
Nasser Zarafshan is an Iranian novelist, translator, and attorney. As a member of the Iranian Writers' Association Kanoon and a notable member of the Iranian Bar Association, Zarafshan's translations and articles have appeared in important periodicals in Iran. He has also acted as the legal envoy of two of the families of Iranian writers who were assassinated in November 1998 in what came to be known in Iran as the 'serial murders' case. - Steven Dietz
Steven Dietz is an American playwright whose work is largely performed regionally, i.e. outside of New York City. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Dietz graduated in 1980 with a Theater degree from the University of Northern Colorado. - Marjorie Williams
Marjorie Williams was born in Princeton, New Jersey to a scientist-turned-homemaker mother and a father who was an editor at Viking Press. After attending Harvard for two years, Williams dropped out in her junior year and moved to New York to work in publishing. Williams had a flair for the business but preferred to go into journalism, and in 1986 she got a job as an editor for the "Washington Post". A year later she became a reporter for the paper's "Style" section. - Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc is a French film critic and film director born July 13 1923, in Paris (France). His role in the auteur theory is noted in his notion of the "caméra-stylo" or "camera-pen" and the idea that a director should wield his camera like a writer uses his pen and that he need not be hindered by traditional storytelling. - Frank Godwin
Frank Godwin (October 20,1889-August 5,1959) was an American illustrator and comic strip artist. He was one of the top draftsmen of his day. His ink work with pen and brush was, in the opinion of many who are familiar with his work, superior to that of his better known contemporaries, such as Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, and James Montgomery Flagg. He is best remembered for his book illustrations, which include those for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, … - Goran Simic
Goran Simic, a Bosnian poet, is recognized in Europe and the US for his works of poetry, essays, short stories and theatre. Goran Simic was born in Bosnia in 1952 and has written eleven volumes of poetry, drama and short fiction, including "Sprinting from the Graveyard" (Oxford, 1997), ; his work has been translated into nine languages and has been published and performed in several European countries. One of the most prominent writers of the former Yugoslavia, … - Frank Brady
Frank Brady (b. March 15, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York) is Chairman of the Department of Mass Communications, Journalism, Television and Film at St. John's University, New York. He is Professor of Communication Arts and Journalism at that university. He has also been an Adjunct Professor of Journalism for the past 25 years at Barnard College of Columbia University. He has a B.S., SUNY; MFA, Columbia University; M.A., Ph.D., New York University. - George Safford Parker
George Safford Parker (b. November 1, 1863 in Shullsburg, Wisconsin; d. July 19, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American inventor and industrialist. Parker was a telegraphy instructor in Janesville and had a sideline repairing and selling fountain pens. Dismayed by the unreliability of the pens, he experimented with ways to prevent ink leaks. In 1890, Parker received his first fountain pen patent; the next year he founded the The Parker Pen Company in Janesville, … - Janine Pommy Vega
Janine Pommy Vega (born February 5, 1942) is an American poet associated with the Beats. Vega grew up in Union City, New Jersey. At the age of fifteen, inspired by Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", she travelled to Manhattan to become involved in the Beat scene there. In 1962, Vega moved to Europe with her husband, painter Fernando Vega. After his sudden death, she returned to New York, and then moved to California. - Herbert W. Franke
Herbert W. Franke (Born May 14, 1927 in Vienna) is one of the most important science fiction authors in the German language. He is also active in the fields of future research, speleology as well as computer graphics and digital art. Franke studied physics, mathematics, chemistry, psychology and philosophy in Vienna. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1950 by writing a dissertation about electron optics. Since 1957, he has worked as a freelance author. - Zaradachet Hajo
Zaradachet Hajo, (or Zerdeşt Haco is a prominent Kurdish writer, linguist and researcher. He was born in Syria in 1950. He has studied linguistics, German and Iranian languages at the Free University of Berlin, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Indo-Iranian language studies. Since 1982, he has been teaching as the universities of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg. He has been the president of the Kurdish chapter of the literary organization PEN since 1998. - Samir El-Youssef
Samir El-Youssef (Samir El Youssef, Samir el youssef) is a Palestinian writer and critic, who was born in 1965 in Rashidia, a Palestinian refugee camp in south of Lebanon. Since 1990 he has been living in London where he studied philosophy and gained a Master of Arts degree from the University of London. As a novelist El-youssef has published four works of fiction, of which Gaza Blues, Different Stories (co-authored with the Israeli Etgar Keret) is the most recent. - Lokman Polat
Lokman Polat, is a Kurdish writer. He was born in "Licê" around Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey. Before 1980, he was involved in publishing political commentaries and news. He has been arrested several times due to his activities in the field of Kurdish literature, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in absentia. He moved to Sweden in 1984 and began writing short stories in Kurdish. - Chen Maiping
Chen Maiping is a Chinese writer, known by the pen name Wan Zhi (万之). He has written mostly short stories, and has also translated literature from English and Swedish to Chinese. During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Chen was an avid contributor to the non-sanctioned, underground literature magazine Jintian ("Today"). For this, he became watched by the Chinese authorities, and since 1986 he is living in exile in Sweden. - Gregory Norminton
Gregory Norminton is a novelist and environmental activist born at Ascot, Berkshire, in 1976. He read English at Regent's Park College, Oxford and studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His novels include "The Ship of Fools" (London: Sceptre, 2001, 2002) (he also collaborated on the French translation), "Arts and Wonders" (London: Sceptre, 2004), and "Ghost Portrait" (London: Sceptre, 2005, 2006). - Hamzah Fansuri
Hamzah Fansuri (also spelled Hamzah Pansuri, d. c. 1590) was a famous Sumatran Sufi writer, the first to pen mystical panentheistic ideas into the Malay language. He wrote both prose and poetry, and worked in the court of the Aceh Sultanate. Fansuri's panentheism derived from the writings of the medieval Islamic scholars. He perceived God as immanent within all things, including the individual, … - Raoul Auernheimer
Raoul Auernheimer was an Austrian jurist and writer. Auernheimer was the son of German businessman Johann Wilhelm Auernheimer and his Hungarian wife Charlotte "Jenny" Büchler. After receiving his Abitur, Auernheimer began to study law at the university in his hometown. He concluded his studied with a doctorate in 1900 and became a court assesor in a Viennese court. At age 30, he married Irene Leopoldine Guttmann of Budapest. - Liang Fa
Liang Fa (梁發 1789 - 1855) was the first Chinese Protestant minister and evangelist. He was ordained by Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China. Liang was born in Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province of China. Coming from a poor family, he quitted formal schoolling at the age of 15 and went to work, first as a pen-maker, then in printing in Guangzhou. In 1810, he was employed in a printing house in Guangzhou. - Robert von Dassanowsky
Robert von Dassanowsky (aka Robert Dassanowsky) born January 28, 1960 in New York, is an Austrian-American academic, writer, film and cultural historian, and producer. A student of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Dassanowsky is a widely published academican, award-winning playwright and has written for television. - Helen Cruickshank
Helen Burness Cruickshank (15 May 1886 - 2 March 1975) was a minor Scottish poet and suffragette, better known for being a focal point of the Scottish Renaissance. At her home in Corstorphine, various Scottish writers of note would meet. Born Helen Burness Cruickshank was in Hillside, near Montrose, Angus, of local parents, she went to school in Montrose. Summer holidays were spent in Glenesk and the landscapes and people of Angus and its glens appear in her poetry.
|
| |