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Kätlin Kaldmaa
Kätlin Kaldmaa (born August 30, 1970) is an Estonian freelance writer, poet, translator and literary critic. Since 2010, Kaldmaa is the president of the Estonian PEN. In 2016 she was elected Secretary of the PEN International. Early life and education Kätlin Kaldmaa was born August 30, 1970, and grew up in Voore, Jõgeva County, Voore, in Jõgeva County. She was the second child of four. Her parents were veterinary technicians. Books have had an important role in Kaldmaa’s life since childhood, when reading and writing them became her favourite pastime. At 18, she moved to Tartu, where she studied Estonian philology at Tartu University. Later, she graduated in English philology from Tallinn University. Career From 1999 to 2006 Kaldmaa worked as an executive director at SDI Media Estonia, a company providing translation services for television. 2006–2010 she was the manager of the cultural news department of the daily newspaper Eesti Päevaleht, and the editor and publishe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuesdays With Morrie
''Tuesdays with Morrie'' is a memoir by American author Mitch Albom about a series of visits Albom made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS. The book topped the ''New York Times'' Non-Fiction Best-Sellers List for 23 combined weeks in 2000, and remained on the ''New York Times'' best-selling list for more than four years after. In 2006, ''Tuesdays with Morrie'' was the bestselling memoir of all time. An unabridged audiobook was also published, narrated by Albom. The appendix of the audiobook contains excerpts from several minutes of audio recordings that Albom made during his conversations with Schwartz before writing the book. A new edition with an afterword by Albom was released on the book's ten-year anniversary in 2007. Synopsis In 1995, Albom is a successful sports columnist for the ''Detroit Free Press''. After seeing his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz appear on ''Nightline'', Albom phones Schwartz and is promp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ali Smith
Ali Smith CBE FRSL (born 24 August 1962) is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting". Early life and education Smith was born in Inverness on 24 August 1962 to Ann and Donald Smith. Her parents were working-class and she was raised in a council house in Inverness. From 1967 to 1974 she attended St. Joseph's RC Primary school, then went on to Inverness High School, leaving in 1980. She studied a joint degree in English language and literature at the University of Aberdeen from 1980 to 1985, coming first in her class in 1982 and gaining a top first in Senior Honours English in 1984. She won the University's Bobby Aitken Memorial Prize for Poetry in 1984. From 1985 to 1990 she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, studying for a PhD in American and Irish modernism. During her time at Cambridge, she began writing plays and as a result did not complete her doctorate. Smith moved to Edin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Hispanic literature, Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo; they had two sons, Rodrigo García (director), Rodrigo and Gonzalo. García Márquez started as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (1967), ''Chronicle of a Death Foretold'' (198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oroonoko
''Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave'' is a work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn (1640–1689), published in 1688 by William Canning and reissued with two other fictions later that year. It was also adapted into a play. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to European colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Behn's text is a first-person account of Oroonoko's life, love, rebellion, and execution. ''Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave'' “centers on the unlucky love story of Oroonoko, an African prince, and the beautiful Imoinda.” Behn, often cited as the first known professional female writer, was a successful playwright, poet, translator and essayist. She began writing prose fiction in the 1680s, probably in response to the consolidation of theatres that led to a reduced need for new plays. Published less than a year before she died, ''Oroonoko'' is sometimes described as one of the first novels in English. Interest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dancer (novel)
''Dancer'' is a novel based on the life of Rudolf Nureyev, written by Colum McCann and published in 2003. Background Nureyev was a Russian ballet dancer who achieved fame with the Kirov Ballet before defecting to the West in 1961 and subsequently became "one of the most written-about dancers in history". He died in 1992. McCann, born in Ireland, had previously written novels, short stories and newspaper reports while travelling and teaching in the United States and Japan; some of his work was set in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 2001, already having "a growing reputation as an international writer", he moved to Russia where he researched his novel based on Nureyev while teaching English. A decade after the book's publication, McCann commented that he personally saw Nureyev as "a monster". Plot and structure The book begins on the Eastern Front during World War II, with Nureyev performing for injured Soviet soldiers as a child. It covers his good fortune in gaining the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colum McCann
Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College, New York. McCann's work has been published in over 40 languages, and has appeared in ''The New York Times'', ''New Yorker'', '' Esquire'', ''Paris Review'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''Granta'', as well as other international publications. McCann is the author of seven novels, including ''TransAtlantic'' (2013) and the National Book Award-winning '' Let the Great World Spin'' (2009). He has also written three collections of short stories, including ''Thirteen Ways of Looking'', released in October 2015. Early life McCann was born in 1965 in Dublin and studied journalism in the former College of Commerce in Rathmines, which became part of the Dublin Institute of Technology and which became the Technological University Dublin in 2019. He became a reporter for ''The Irish Press'' Group, and had his own column ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Meek (author)
James Meek (born 1962) is a British novelist and journalist, author of ''The People's Act of Love''. He was born in London, England, and grew up in Dundee, Scotland. Biography Meek attended school at Grove Academy in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, and studied at Edinburgh University. His first short stories were published in the '' New Edinburgh Review'' and he collaborated with Duncan McLean on a play, ''Faculty of Rats'', which starred Angus Macfadyen. After a few years in England Meek returned to Edinburgh in 1988, where he worked for ''The Scotsman''. The following year, his first novel, ''McFarlane Boils the Sea'', was published. In 1990 he helped McLean set up the garage publishing house Clocktower Press. In 1991 Meek moved to Kiev and in 1994 to Moscow. He joined the staff of ''The Guardian'', becoming its Moscow bureau chief. In 1999 he moved to London. He left the ''Guardian'' in 2005. He is the author of five novels, two books of short stories and a book of essays about p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meg Rosoff
Meg Rosoff (born 16 October 1956) is an American writer based in London, United Kingdom. She is best known for the novel ''How I Live Now'' (Puffin, 2004), which won the Guardian Prize, Printz Award, and Branford Boase Award and made the Whitbread Awards shortlist. Her second novel, ''Just in Case'' (Penguin, 2006), won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians recognising the year's best children's book published in the UK. Early life and education Rosoff was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1956, into a Jewish family, the second of four sisters. She attended Harvard University from 1974-1977, then moved to London and studied sculpture at Saint Martin's School of Art. She returned to the United States to finish her degree in 1980, and later moved to New York City for 9 years, where she worked in publishing and advertising. Career In 1989, at the age of 32 Rosoff returned to London and has lived there ever since. Between 1989 and 2003, she worked for a variety ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE (born 24 August 1948), is a British writer. He was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and formerly Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He became an expert on medical law and bioethics and served on related British and international committees. He has since become known as a fiction writer, with sales in English exceeding 40 million by 2010 and translations into 46 languages. He is known as the creator of ''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'' series. The "McCall" derives from his great-great-grandmother Bethea McCall, who married James Smith at Glencairn, Dumfries-shire, in 1833. Early life Alexander McCall Smith was born in 1948 in Bulawayo in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), to British parents. He was the only son, having three elder sisters. His father worked as a public prosecutor in Bulawayo. McCall Smith's paternal grandfather was the medical doctor and New Zealand communit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drown (short Story Collection)
''Drown'' is the semi-autobiographical, debut short story collection from Dominican-American author Junot Díaz that address the trials of Dominican immigrants as they attempt to find some semblance of the American Dream after immigrating to America. The stories are set in the context of 1980s America, and are narrated by an adult who is looking back at his childhood. ''Drown'' was published by Riverhead Books in 1996. ''Drown'' precedes his novel ''The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao'', which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the short story collection ''This Is How You Lose Her''. ''Drown'' is dedicated to his mother, Virtudes Díaz. Background Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and came with his family to New Jersey when he was a young boy. When asked if he remembers the experience, he says: "If I burn your entire country down, would you remember being six or seven? There is nothing like the trauma of losing one's country and gaining another. It makes recoll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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