Wesleyan University

Daniel Handler is an American author, screenwriter and accordionist. He is best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket. Handler was... born in San Francisco, California, the son of Sandra Handler Day , an opera singer and retired City College of San Francisco Dean, and Lou Handler, an accountant. His father was a Jewish refugee from Germany, and his mother is distantly related to British writer Hugh Walpole. He has a younger sister, Rebecca Handler. He attended Commodore Sloat Elementary, Herbert Hoover Middle School and Lowell High School. Handler graduated from Wesleyan University in 1992. He is an alumnus of the San Francisco Boys Chorus. Handler is politically active and helped form LitPAC. In the June 10, 2007 edition of The New York Times Magazine, Handler reveals ambivalence toward his wealth, and the expectations it creates. He states he is often asked for money for charitable causes and often gives. He has supported the Occupy Wall Street movement. In an interview conducted by the 667 Dark Avenue fan site, Daniel Handler gave his personal philosophy as "Never refuse a breath mint".
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William J. Mann is an American novelist, biographer, and Hollywood historian best known for his 2006 biography of Katharine Hepburn, Kate: The Woman... Who Was Hepburn. Kate was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2006 by The New York Times. Mann was born in Connecticut and, after working briefly as a Capitol Hill aide, received his Master's degree at Wesleyan University. He worked as a journalist at Metroline magazine, New England's oldest gay publication, from 1992 to 1995. Mann published his first novel, The Men From the Boys, in 1997, and continued with a series of books set in Provincetown, although he has also set his fiction in Palm Springs and Los Angeles. In addition, Mann has written the nonfiction books Wisecracker , a biography of film star William Haines, for which he won the Lambda Literary Award, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood , and Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger . Mann's most recent biography is How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood. "Reading this life is like gorging on a chocolate sundae", Publishers Weekly wrote of the book. In 2009 Mann also published a novel, Object of Desire.
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Akiva J. Goldsman from Walker Valley, New York is an American film and television writer, director, and producer. He received an Academy Award for... Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture. Goldsman has been involved specifically with Hollywood films. His filmography includes the films A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend and Cinderella Man, as well as more serious dramas, and numerous rewrites both credited and uncredited. In 2006 Goldsman re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for a high profile project, adapting Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code for Howard's much-anticipated film version, receiving mixed reviews for his work. Goldsman currently serves as a writer, director, and consulting producer on the FOX science-fiction/horror series Fringe. Akiva Goldsman was born in New York City on July 7, 1962 to Tev Goldsman, a therapist, and Mira Rothenberg, a child psychologist. Both parents ran a group home for emotionally disturbed children. Goldsman's parents were occupied with their work, and Goldsman said, "By the time I was 10 or 12, I realized they had taken my parents away from me.
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Allie Wrubel was an American composer and songwriter. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, Wrubel attended Wesleyan University and Columbia University... before working in dance bands. He began his musical career in Greenwich Village, New York where he roomed with his close friend James Cagney. He played saxophone and clarinet for a variety of famous swing bands. In 1934 he moved to Hollywood to work for Warner Bros. as a contract song writer. He contributed material to a large number of movies, including those of the famous Busby Berkeley before moving to Disney in 1947. Wrubel collaborated with lyricist Ray Gilbert on the song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from the film Song of the South which won the Oscar for Best Song in 1947. Wrubel also contributed to the films Make Mine Music, Duel in the Sun, I Walk Alone, Melody Time, Tulsa, Never Steal Anything Small and Midnight Lace. The lyricists with whom he collaborated included Abner Silver, Herb Magidson, Charles Newman, Mort Dixon and Ned Washington. When he died, at Twentynine Palms, California, he left a lengthy catalogue of songs. Allie Wrubel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
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Debby Applegate is an American historian and biographer. She is the author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher,... for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Born in Eugene, Oregon, Applegate grew up in Clackamas, Oregon graduating from Clackamas High School in 1985. She graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1989 and was a Sterling Fellow at Yale University, where she earned a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1998. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, The Most Famous Man in America was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, and won The Victorian Society in America, Metropolitan Chapter, Book Award, the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union and the Frederick D. Melcher Book Award. It was named one of the best books of 2006 by The New York Times Book Review, NPR's Fresh Air, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and American Heritage Magazine.
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Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of... Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989. Wilbur was born in New York City and grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey. He graduated from Montclair High School in 1938, having worked on the school newspaper as a student there. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 and then served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. After the Army and graduate school at Harvard University, Wilbur taught at Wesleyan University for two decades and at Smith College for another decade. At Wesleyan, he was instrumental in founding the award-winning poetry series of the University Press. He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and, as of 2011, teaches at Amherst College. He is also on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College. He married Charlotte Hayes Ward in 1942 after his graduation from Amherst; she was a student at nearby Smith College.
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Debby Applegate is an American historian and biographer. She is the author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher,... for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Born in Eugene, Oregon, Applegate grew up in Clackamas, Oregon graduating from Clackamas High School in 1985. She graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1989 and was a Sterling Fellow at Yale University, where she earned a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1998. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, The Most Famous Man in America was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, and won The Victorian Society in America, Metropolitan Chapter, Book Award, the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union and the Frederick D. Melcher Book Award. It was named one of the best books of 2006 by The New York Times Book Review, NPR's Fresh Air, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and American Heritage Magazine.
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Max Tishler was president of Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories where he led the research teams that synthesized ascorbic acid, riboflavin,... cortisone, miamin, pyridoxine, pantothenic acid, nicotinamide, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan. He also developed the fermentation processes for actinomycin, vitamin B12, streptomycin, and penicillin. Tishler invented sulfaquinoxaline for the treatment for coccidiosis. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 30, 1906. His father repaired shoes and he abandoned the family in 1911. Max worked in a pharmacy during the flu pandemic of 1918. He studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Tufts College, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. In 1934 he earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard University. He married Elizabeth M. Verveer in 1934. He taught at Harvard from 1934 to 1937. His son, Peter Verveer Tishler, was born on July 18, 1937. In 1937, he took a position at Merck. His first project at Merck was to produce riboflavin. In the 1940s he developed a process for the synthesis of cortisone.
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