Anupama Ravindran Menon, Izlyn, Chan Huey Yung, Sangeetha Siva Sangu, Alison Yap, Jowena Locke, Darshana, Myra Ng, Vinothini Ananda Krishnan, Samuel Po Kin Hong, Sharel, Renisha Leena, K WK, Noel Wong Yan Ming, Diyana Soraya, Chong Beng Wei, Andrew Teo, Ayesha Zahra, Sheu Quen, Ammara Ayyash.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-ca. 1914) was an American journalist, short-story writer, and poet. Born in Ohio, he served in the Civil War and then settled in San Francisco. He wrote for Hearst's Examiner, his wit and satire making him the literary dictator of the Pacific coast and strongly influencing many writers. He disappeared into war-torn Mexico in 1913.
Bronson Pinchot, Audible's Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible's Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People's Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.
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Jennifer Bradshaw has lent her voice to a number of audio books, including Secret Life of a Vampire: Love at Stake, Willow Springs, and The Crime Is Murder.
John Lee is the winner of numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration. He has twice won acclaim as AudioFile's Best Voice in Fiction & Classics. He also narrates video games, does voice-over work, and writes plays.
Gerard Doyle, a seasoned audio narrator, he has been awarded dozens of AudioFile Earphones Awards, was named a Best Voice in Young Adult Fiction in 2008, and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He was born of Irish parents and raised and educated in England. In Great Britain he has enjoyed an extensive career in both television and repertory theater and toured nationally and internationally with the English Shakespeare Company. He has appeared in London's West End in the gritty musical The Hired Man. In America he has appeared on Broadway in The Weir and on television in New York Undercover and Law & Order. He has taught drama at Ross School for the several years.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York. Family hardships forced him to leave school for various occupations, including shipping as a cabin boy to Liverpool in 1839--a voyage that sparked his love for the sea. A shrewd social critic and philosopher in his fiction, he is considered an outstanding writer of the sea and a great stylist who mastered both realistic narrative and a rich, rhythmical prose.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-ca. 1914) was an American journalist, short-story writer, and poet. Born in Ohio, he served in the Civil War and then settled in San Francisco. He wrote for Hearst's Examiner, his wit and satire making him the literary dictator of the Pacific coast and strongly influencing many writers. He disappeared into war-torn Mexico in 1913.
Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. After he was deserted by his father, an itinerant astrologer, he was raised in Oakland by his mother. Although his youth was marked by poverty, he became an avid reader by the age of ten. Young Jack frequented the Oakland Public Library, where he was influenced by the works of Flaubert, Tolstoy, and other major novelists. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, London worked as a seaman, rode freight trains as a hobo, and joined in protest armies of the unemployed during the hard times of the 1890s. In 1894, he was arrested in Niagara Falls and jailed for vagrancy. He then made a vow to better himself. Later these hard-life adventures provided rich material for his well known works, such as The Sea-Wolf. London educated himself in public libraries, and at the age of nineteen, he was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley. However, London left the school before the year was over and went to seek a fortune in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. His attempt to find gold was unsuccessful, and he spent a harsh winter near Dawson City suffering from scurvy before returning to San Francisco. For the remainder of 1898, London tried to earn his living by writing, finding his first success with The Son of the Wolf in 1900. That same year he married Elisabeth Maddern, but left her and their two daughters three years later to marry Charmian Kittredge. After publishing his first book, he produced a steady stream of fiction novels and short stories. In 1901, London ran unsuccessfully on the Socialist Party ticket for mayor of Oakland. In 1902, he went to England, where he studied the backside of the British Empire. His report about the economic degradation of the poor in The People of the Abyss became a surprise success in the United States but was decried in England. In 1904, London traveled to Korea as a correspondent for one of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers to cover the war between Russia and Japan. The next year he published his first collection of nonfiction pieces, The War of the Classes, which included lectures on socialism. In 1907, London and his second wife attempted a sailing trip around the world aboard the Snark. They aborted the journey in Australia due to hardships. In 1910, London purchased a ranch land near Glen Ellen, California, and devoted all his energy and money to improving it. He also traveled widely and reported on the Mexican Revolution. In 1913, London's ranch house burned to the ground.Debts, alcoholism, illness, and fear of losing his creativity darkened the author's last years. Jack London died on November 22, 1916.
Kate Chopin (1851-1901) was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis in 1851. She was a popular social belle, admired for her wit and beauty. In 1871 she married Oscar Chopin and lived in Louisiana until his sudden death in 1882. Chopin began writing about the Creole and Cajun people in the South, gaining acclaim for her finely crafted short stories. Upon publication in 1899, her now-classic novel The Awakening was widely condemned for its controversial themes, and Chopin was devastated by its harsh critical reception. She died in 1904, denied in her lifetime the recognition she desperately wanted and richly deserved.
The career of one of the prominent authors Bret Harte was quite dynamic as he contributed in various sectors like teaching, working as a miner and later as a journalist. But he was mostly known after he started his literary career, especially for his short and loving stories and poems. Being an American author and poet, he got high recognition after his work exploring the American West during the 19th century. He was born in 1836 in Albany New York and later he moved to California and gained experience which significantly influenced his style of writing. Apart from this book, some of his notable work includes "The Luck of Roaring Camp" an aesthetic short story that's established his reputation as a writer in Western literature. Despite facing a lot of criticism for his work resulted in deviation from his earlier success. However, created long long-lasting impact on people by contributing a heart-warming and aesthetic glimpse of Western culture. Bret Harte's writing style was highly praised for combining humour with a deep connection to human nature.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born of Irish parentage in Scotland. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, but he also had a passion for storytelling. His first book introduced that prototype of the modern detective in fiction, Sherlock Holmes. Despite the immense popularity Holmes gained throughout the world, Doyle was not overly fond of the character and preferred to write other stories. Eventually popular demand won out and he continued to satisfy readers with the adventures of the legendary sleuth. He also wrote historical romances and made two essays into pseudoscientific fantasy: The Lost World and The Poison Belt.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) was the pen name and alter ego of Samuel Clemens, an American humorist, satirist, social critic, lecturer and novelist. He is considered one of the fathers of American literature and is remembered most fondly for his classic novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), the author of hundreds of short stories and several plays, is regarded by many as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama. He described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, thereby becoming the prominent representative of the late nineteenth-century Russian realist school. His early stream-of-consciousness style strongly influenced the literary world, including writers such as James Joyce.
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and settled in Europe to finish her education. She published her first short fiction in The New Age, then in Rhythm, whose editor, the British writer and critic John Middleton Murry, she soon married. Her writing contributed to the development of the stream of consciousness technique and to the modernist use of multiple viewpoints, and her style has had a powerful influence on subsequent writers in the same genre.
James Joyce is the author of Pucker Factor 10: Memoir of a US Army Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and has written numerous articles for newspapers such as the Durango Herald and the Chicago Tribune. He is CEO of Green Mountain International, a global purveyor of polyurethane construction products, and lives in Waynesville, North Carolina.
Edward Morgan (E.M.) Forster was born in 1879 in London and educated in Cambridge. After graduating, he traveled to Greece and Italy. The Story of a Panic was his first short story and was published in 1904. Forster taught in Germany and England. His first novel was Where Angels Fear to Tread, published in 1905. Forster joined the International Red Cross at the outbreak of World War I and was posted in Alexandria until 1919. In 1924, he published A Passage To India. He refused knighthood but was awarded the Order of Merit in 1969. He died in 1970.
Alphonse Daudet was a French author who lived from May 13, 1840, to December 16, 1897. He was married to Julia Daudet and had three children, Angélique, Léon, and Lucien. He was born in Nimes, France. Both sides of his family were from the upper class. Vincent Daudet, his father, was a silk maker. He had a lot of bad luck and failed in life. Alphonse had a sad childhood because he skipped school a lot. He started his job as a teacher in 1856 at Alès, Gard, in the south of France. He had spent most of his school years in Lyon. The job turned out to be unbearable, and Daudet later said that for months after he left Alès, he would wake up scared, thinking he was still with his bad students. His book Le Petit Chose was based on these and other events in his life. He quit teaching on November 1, 1857, and went to live with his younger brother Ernest Daudet, who was trying "and thereto soberly" to make a living as a writer in Paris. Ernest was only three years older than him. He started writing songs, which were put together in a small book called Les Amoureuses (1858) and did pretty well.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a popular nineteenth-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents. A protégé of Flaubert, his stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some three hundred short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a popular nineteenth-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents. A protege of Flaubert, his stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless denouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some three hundred short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomized the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as "grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken." In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, and their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death the New York Times said of him, "He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a 'generation.'
One of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Willa Cather (1873-1947) enjoyed distinguished careers as a journalist, editor, and fiction writer. She is most often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West. Cather's fiction is characterized by a strong sense of place, the subtle presentation of human relationships, an often unconventional narrative structure, and a style of clarity and beauty. Willa was born on December 7, 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Virginia. In 1883, the Cather family moved to Nebraska, where her father opened a loan and insurance office. Willa attributed the family's lack of financial success to her father, whom she claimed placed intellectual and spiritual matters over those of the business. Her mother was a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying to turn Willa into "a lady," despite the fact that Willa defied the norms for girls, cutting her hair short and wearing trousers. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Willa was offered a position editing Home Monthly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While editing the magazine, she wrote short stories to fill its pages, including a collection called "The Troll Garden" in 1905, which caught the attention of S. S. McClure. The following year, Willa moved to New York to join the editorial staff of McClure's Magazine. She eventually became managing editor and saved the magazine from financial disaster. After the publication of "Alexander's Bridge" in 1912, she left McClure's and devoted herself to creative writing. A year later, Willa published her bestseller O Pioneers!-a celebration of the strength and courage of the frontier settlers. Other well-known novels with this theme are My Ántonia and the Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours. Willa's prolific success lead to a period of despair, but after she recovered, she wrote some of her greatest novels, including The Professor's House, My Mortal Enemy, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. She maintained an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories for many years until her death on April 24, 1947.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1848) transformed the American literary landscape with his innovations in the short story genre and his haunting lyrical poetry, and he is credited with inventing American gothic horror and detective fiction.
David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885. He was not only an important but also disputable English essayist of the 20th century. He was one of the main scholars of English Modernism. Lawrence was a skilled author who wrote several books, brief tales, sonnets, plays, papers, travel guides, artistic creations, interpretations, abstract analyses, and individual letters. Lawrence is remembered today for stretching the boundaries beyond what was regarded as satisfactory in abstract fiction whereas different Modernists such as Joyce and Woolf were content to radicalize the types of writing, Lawrence focused on extending the scope of the artistic topic. Specifically, he consolidated Freudian therapy, forthright portrayals of sexuality, and enchanted strict subjects into his works that were very unexpected and fresh to the crowds of his time. Even though he is regarded as one of the main figures in the early history of Modernism, Lawrence stays questionable. His monstrous result is famously lopsided and he never lived to the point of refining his views into reasonable thoughts. Different pundits mock Lawrence unequivocally and it is the case that a portion of his lesser works was composed more to stun than to illuminate the brain with the brightness of workmanship genuinely. Regardless, Lawrence was a virtuoso of the greatest request, and his most modern sonnets and books are among the most persuasive works of 20th-century writing.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927), English humorist, novelist, and playwright, was born in Staffordshire and brought up in London. After a series of jobs including clerk, schoolmaster, actor, and journalist, he became joint editor of the Idler in 1892 and launched his own twopenny weekly, To-Day. His magnificently ridiculous Three Men in a Boat (1889) established itself as a humorous classic of the whimsical. His other books include Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886); Three Men on the Bummel (1900); Paul Kelver (1902); the morality play The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1907); and his autobiography, My Life and Times (1926).
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is the author the novels The Age of Innocence and Old New York, both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was the first woman to receive that honor. In 1929 she was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. She was born in New York and is best known for her stories of life among the upper-class society into which she was born. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. In 1894 she began writing fiction, and her novel The House of Mirth established her as a leading writer.
O. Henry (1862-1910), born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina, was a short-story writer whose tales romanticized the commonplace, in particular, the lives of ordinary people in New York City. His stories often had surprise endings, a device that became identified with his name. He began writing sketches around 1887, and his stories of adventure in the Southwest United States and in Central America were immediately popular with magazine readers.
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