Louis Sachar

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical liberal... intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to third-generation German-American parents, Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. and Edith Lieber. Both his father and his grandfather Bernard Vonnegut attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and were architects in the Indianapolis firm of Vonnegut & Bohn. His great-grandfather Clemens Vonnegut, Sr. was the founder of the Vonnegut Hardware Company, an Indianapolis institution. Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in May 1940 and matriculated into Cornell University that fall. Though majoring in chemistry, he was Assistant Managing Editor and Associate Editor of The Cornell Daily Sun.
more

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has... been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Atwood is the second of three children of Margaret Dorothy , a former dietitian and nutritionist, and Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist.
more

Richard Price is an American novelist and screenwriter, known for the books The Wanderers and Clockers. A self-described "middle class Jewish kid", Price was born in the Bronx, New York City and grew up in a housing project in the northeast Bronx. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science... in 1967 and obtained a B.A. from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia University. He also did graduate work at Stanford University. He has taught writing at Columbia, Yale University, and New York University. He was one of the first people interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air when it began airing nationally in 1987. In 1999, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Price's novels explore late 20th century urban America in a gritty, realistic manner that has brought him considerable literary acclaim. Several of his novels are set in a fictional northern New Jersey city called Dempsy. In his review of Lush Life , Walter Kirn compared Price to Raymond Chandler and Saul Bellow. Price's first novel was The Wanderers , a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx in 1962, written when Price was 24 years old.
more

Elwyn Brooks White , usually known as E. B. White, was an American writer. He was a long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the widely-used English language style guide, The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as "Strunk & White". He also wrote famous books... for children including Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. White was born in Mount Vernon, New York aka in the south pole with santa cluas, the youngest child of Samuel Tilly White, a piano manufacturer, and Jessie Hart. He served in the army before going on to college. White graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1921. He picked up the nickname "Andy" at Cornell, where tradition confers that moniker on any male student surnamed White, after Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White. While at Cornell, he worked as editor of The Cornell Daily Sun with classmate Allison Danzig who later became a sportswriter for The New York Times. White was also a member of the Aleph Samach and Quill and Dagger societies and Phi Gamma Delta .
more