- Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer. The illegitimate son of a notary, Messer Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, … - Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American comedian, writer, producer, actor, musician and composer. - Tom Jones
Tom Jones (born in 1928 in Littlefield, Texas) is a lyricist (and often librettist) of musical theatre, best known for the longest running musical in history, "The Fantasticks", which ran off-Broadway from 1960 until 2002. Jones is currently directing, and acting in, a revival of "The Fantasticks". He plays the part of the Old Actor, which he also played when the musical opened in 1960. He is credited as an actor in the show as Thomas Bruce. - Lee Jones
Lee Jones is the author of "Winning Low-Limit Hold 'em" and a contributor of poker articles to Card Player Magazine. Jones earned his B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University in North Carolina in 1978, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1983. From October 2003 to April 2007, Jones worked as the cardroom manager of the PokerStars online poker cardroom. - Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy (born July 20, 1933) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who has authored ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He has also written plays and screenplays. Literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. - Liz Smith
Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith (born February 2 1923 in Fort Worth, Texas) is an American gossip columnist. Liz Smith is known as The Grand Dame of Dish. - Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (born June 20, 1968) is an Mexican-American writer and film director who is known for making profitable, crowd-pleasing independent and studio films with fairly low budgets and fast schedules by Hollywood standards. Rodriguez shoots and produces many of his films in Texas and Mexico. - Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor, writer and film director. - Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18 1931), is a Nobel Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialog, and richly detailed African American characters; among the best known are her novels "The Bluest Eye", "Song of Solomon", and "Beloved", which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. - Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American writer, producer, and director of films and commercials. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. - Erykah Badu
Erykah Badu (born Erica Abi Wright on February 26, 1971 in Dallas, Texas) is an American R&B, soul, neo soul, and hip hop singer and songwriter whose work crosses over into jazz. She is best known for the single "You Got Me", her collaboration with The Roots, as well as her own songs "Tyrone", "Next Lifetime", "On & On", "Bag Lady", and "Cleva". Influenced early on by singers such as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Chaka Khan (her all-time favorite artist), … - Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine (born April 24, 1934) is an Academy Award-winning American film and theatre actress, well-known not only for her acting, but for her devotion to her belief in reincarnation. She is also the writer of a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her new age beliefs, such as solipsism, as well as her Hollywood career. She is the older sister of Warren Beatty. - Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas (born August 15 1965 in Sunnyside, Washington) is an author and screenwriter, best known for his book "Rats Saw God" and his television program "Veronica Mars". - Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien (born October 1, 1946) is an American novelist who mainly writes about his experiences in the Vietnam War and the impact the war had on the American soldiers who fought there. He regularly teaches in the MFA fiction writing program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. O'Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota, a town of about 9,000 people (a setting which figures prominently in his novels). - Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was an American scriptwriter and producer. He is best known as the creator of what would become the science fiction universe of "Star Trek". He would also become one of the first people to be buried in space. - Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 - September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter and novelist, and a member of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee about alleged communist involvement. Born in Montrose, Colorado, Trumbo attended the University of Colorado for two years. The central fountain at the University was named in his honor in the mid-1990s. - Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe (born May 7, 1931, New York, New York) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusion-rich prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, which he adopted after marrying a Catholic. He is a prolific short story writer as well as a novelist, and has won the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award twice each, the Campbell Memorial Award, and the Locus Award four times. - Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm ("Wim") Wenders is a German film director, playwright, photographer, and producer. He was born in Düsseldorf. - Jim Thompson
James Myers Thompson (Born September 27, 1906, Anadarko, Oklahoma Territory - Died April 7, 1977, Los Angeles, California) was an American writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction. Thompson was best-known for more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, in the late-1940s and mid-1950s. - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as "The Mists of Avalon" and the Darkover series, often with a feminist outlook. In literary circles, she is often referred to by her initials, "MZB," a nickname reinforced by her friend and editor, Donald A. Wollheim. - Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 - February 4, 1995) was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers which have led to more than two dozen film adaptations. "Strangers on a Train" has been adapted to the screen three times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. In addition to her acclaimed series about murderer Tom Ripley, she wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humor. - Mike Judge
Michael Craig Judge (born 17 October 1962 in Guayaquil, Ecuador) is an American animator, actor, voice actor, writer, and producer, best-known as the creator and star of the hit animated television series "Beavis and Butt-head" and "King of the Hill". He also wrote and directed the films "Office Space", "Idiocracy", and "Beavis and Butt-head Do America". - David Remnick
David Remnick (born October 29, 1958 in Hackensack, New Jersey) is an American journalist, writer, and magazine editor. As a reporter for the "Washington Post", he also served as the paper's Moscow correspondent. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire". He has been editor of "The New Yorker" magazine since 1998. He has edited several collections of writings from "The New Yorker" and in 1999, … - Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson is a German American writer who has written numerous novels, short stories and poems. He was raised in Tokyo, Manila, and Washington. He holds a masters' degree from the University of Iowa. His work was influenced by the novelist Leonard Gardner. He has received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993) and a Whiting Writer’s Award (1986). His most famous work is the collection of short stories Jesus' Son. - Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick is a wonderful director whose work is sumptuous and engrossing. With Badlands and Days of Heaven , both of which I haven't seen in a preposterously long time, Malick's lingering tones and rich meticulous shots are fully on display. In his career, which has spanned decades, the gifted American film director has only made four feature length films and one short. - Patrick Wilson
Patrick Wilson (born February 15, 1969) is a fiction writer based in Houston, Texas. Patrick Wilson was born in Phoenix, Arizona and began his writing career at the age of 15, with a column in the Ft. Stockton, Texas, newspaper. He branched out into fiction in his late teens, publishing stories in horror and science fiction genre magazines. He is currently anticipating negotiations to publish his latest novel. - Ry Cooder
Ryland "Ry" Peter Cooder (born 15 March 1947, in Los Angeles, California) is an American guitarist, singer and composer, known for his slide guitar work, his interest in the American roots music and, more recently, for his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries. Cooder was ranked number 8 on "Rolling Stone"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." - Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer. Spelling currently holds the world record as the world's most prolific television producer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits. - Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally (born), is an American playwright, considered one of the leading American dramatists still writing today. In addition to four Tony Awards, McNally has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and has served as vice-president since 1981. - Ted Casablanca
Texas-born Bruce Bibby, better known by his alter-ego Ted Casablanca, is an American entertainment journalist for E! Online and has a column called "The Awful Truth" where he regularly dispenses gossip on the private lives of celebrities. Casablanca began writing for Premiere magazine in 1987 where he originally conceived his column before transferring it to E! in 1996 as a weekly (then subsequently, daily) column. - Max Lucado
Max Lucado is a best-selling Christian author and well-known minister. Lucado has written more than 50 books with 28 million copies in print, and currently serves as senior minister at Oak Hills Church (formerly Oak Hills Church of Christ) in San Antonio, Texas. After serving in this capacity for 20 years, Lucado announced in early 2007 that he is stepping down due to health concerns related to atrial fibrillation. Lucado was born in 1955 in San Angelo, Texas, … - Kinky Friedman
Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman (born October 31, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for "Texas Monthly". He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the five-party race. - Dave White
Dave White (born June 7, 1964 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire) is an American writer, music critic, and film critic. White is a prolific freelance writer; his reviews, interviews, and critical analysis of films, music, and pop culture has been featured in The Village Voice, Instinct, The Advocate, Glue, and Frontiers, among others. His writing stint as a music critic for Instinct began as a result of a letter to the editor about their existing coverage of music. - Alan Furst
Alan Furst (born February 20, 1941) is an American author of historical spy novels set just prior to and during the Second World War. Born in New York City, and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Furst received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1962 and an M.A. from Penn State in 1967. Furst's papers, on deposit at the Ransom Humanities Center in the University of Texas at Austin, … - Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery (February 26, 1908 - August 26, 1980) was an American animator, cartoonist, and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, creating the characters of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Droopy, Screwball Squirrel, and developing Porky Pig and Chilly Willy into regular cartoon characters. - Dj Premier
Christopher Edward Martin (born March 21, 1966), better known as DJ Premier (and affectionately "Premo"/"Primo"/"Preem" by his fans, fellow musicians and critics) is a prominent American hip hop producer and DJ, and the instrumental half of the duo Gang Starr, together with MC Guru on the lyrical side. Originally from Houston, he has lived in Brooklyn, New York virtually his entire professional career. - Andre Dubus
Andre Dubus (August 11, 1936 - February 24, 1999) was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. - John Stockwell
John Stockwell (b. John Samuels March 25, 1961 in Galveston, Texas, USA) is an American actor, director, producer, and writer. He has starred in film and on television. His first feature film as an actor came in 1981 in the movie "So Fine". His well known roles came in the 1983 comedy film "Losin' It" as Spider, later that year, he starred in the John Carpenter horror movie "Christine" as Dennis Guilder, … - Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE MC (8 September 1886 - 1 September 1967) was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I, but later won acclaim for his prose work. - Lil' Flip
Wesley Eric Weston, Jr. (born March 3, 1981 in Houston, Texas), better known as Lil' Flip, is an American rapper known for his freestyle ability, and for becoming one of the first Houston rap artists to become mainstream and nationally known. Lil' Flip was given the title of "Freestyle King" by the late DJ Screw. He is also a member of the Screwed Up Click.
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