Anna Deavere Smith

Total similar authors (33)

• 

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  People know American writer Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson for Ramona (1884), a romantic novel concerning the injustices that Native Americans suffered.
  
  This author, an activist for rights, wrote best about the ill treatment in southern California.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_H...
  

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Gary Owen

  Gary Owen is a Welsh playwright and screenwriter. His recent plays include Violence and Son which had its premiere at the Royal Court in June 2015, and Iphigenia in Splott for which he won the James Tait Black Prize for Drama.
  
  His other works include Love Steals Us From Loneliness, Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco, The Shadow of a Boy, (winner of Meyer Whitworth and George Devine awards), The Drowned World  (winner of Fringe First and Pearson Best Play awards), Ghost City, Cancer Time, SK8, Big Hopes, In the Pipeline, Blackthorn, Mary Twice, Amgen:Broken, Bulletproof, and Free Folk. His adaptations include Spring Awakening and Ring Ring, a new version of La Ronde, for the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama; and Dickens' A Christmas Carol for Sh

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  David Markson

  David Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."
  
  Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
  
  Dalkey Archive Press has published several of hi

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Chester Himes

  Chester Bomar Himes began writing in the early 1930s while serving a prison sentence for armed robbery. From there, he produced short stories for periodicals such as Esquire and Abbott's Monthly. When released, he focussed on semi-autobiographical protest novels.
  
  In 1953, Himes emigrated to France, where he was approached by Marcel Duhamel of Gallimard to write a detective series for Série Noire, which had published works from the likes of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson. Himes would be the first black author included in the series. The resulting Harlem Cycle gained him celebrity when he won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for La Reine des Pommes (now known in English as A Rage in Harlem) in 1958. Three of t

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Anthony Neilson

  Anthony Neilson (born 1967) is a Scottish playwright and director. He is known for his collabo rative way of writing and workshopping his plays. Much of his work is characterised by the exploration of sex and violence.
  
  Neilson has been cited as a key figure of In-yer-face theatre, a term used to characterise new plays with a confrontational style and sensibility that emerged in British theatre during the 1990s. He has been credited with coining the phrase "in-your-face theatre" but has rejected the label and instead describes his work as “'experiential' theatre”.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Tom Stoppard

  Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
  Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeli

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Toni Morrison

  Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
  Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction a

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Michael Ondaatje

  Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, and essayist, renowned for his contributions to both poetry and prose. He was born in Colombo in 1943, to a family of Tamil and Burgher descent. Ondaatje emigrated to Canada in 1962, where he pursued his education, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts from Queen's University.
  Ondaatje’s literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General’s Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 in 1979. He publishe

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Jessica Hagedorn

  Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn was born (and raised) in Manila, Philippines in 1949. With her background, a Scots-Irish-French-Filipino mother and a Filipino-Spanish father with one Chinese ancestor, Hagedorn adds a unique perspective to Asian American performance and literature. Her mixed media style often incorporates song, poetry, images, and spoken dialogue.
  
  Moving to San Francisco in 1963, Hagedorn received her education at the American Conservatory Theater training program. To further pursue playwriting and music, she moved to New York in 1978.
  
  Joseph Papp produced her first play Mango Tango in 1978. Hagedorn's other productions include Tenement Lover, Holy Food, and Teenytown.
  
  In 1985, 1986, and 1988, she received Macdowell Colony Fellowship

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Eugene O'Neill

  American playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored Mourning Becomes Electra in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Long Day's Journey into Night , produced in 1956.
  
  He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
  
  His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  David Markson

  David Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."
  
  Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
  
  Dalkey Archive Press has published several of hi

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Nilo Cruz

  Cruz'z interest in theater began with acting and directing in the early 1980s. He studied theater first at Miami-Dade Community College, later moving to New York City, where Cruz studied under fellow Cuban María Irene Fornés. Fornes recommended Cruz to Paula Vogel who was teaching at Brown University where he would later receive his M.F.A. in 1994.
  
  In 2001, Cruz served as the playwright-in-residence for the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he wrote Anna in the Tropics. Rafael de Acha, produced and directed the world premier performance of Anna in the Tropics, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer and the Steinberg Award for Best New Play. A year later it received its Broadway premiere with Jimmy Smits in the lead role.
  
  Some of the theatres

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Sarah Kane

  Sarah Kane was an English playwright. Her plays deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture—both physical and psychological—and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form, and, in her earlier work, the use of stylized violent stage action. Kane battled with depression, and her life was brought to a premature end when she committed suicide at London's King's College Hospital. Her published work consists of five plays and one short film, Skin.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Sophie Calle

  Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Kiran Desai

  Kiran Desai is an Indian author who is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. She is the daughter of the noted author Anita Desai.
  
  Desai's first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998), gained accolades from notable figures including Salman Rushdie, and went on to receive the Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Ntozake Shange

  Ntozake Shange (pronounced En-toe-ZAHK-kay SHONG-gay) was an African-American playwright, performance artist, and writer who is best known for her Obie Award winning play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.
  
  Among her honors and awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, and a Pushcart Prize.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Moisés Kaufman

  Moisés Kaufman (born November 21, 1963) is a playwright, director and founder of Tectonic Theater Project. He is best known for writing The Laramie Project with other members of Tectonic Theater Project. He is also the author of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and 33 Variations. He was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela and moved to New York City in 1987.
  
  Kaufman is of Romanian and Ukrainian Jewish descent. He described himself in an interview by saying "I am Venezuelan, I am Jewish, I am gay, I live in New York. I am the sum of all my cultures. I couldn’t write anything that didn’t incorporate all that I am."
  
  Kaufman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. He made his Broadway directing debut in the 2004 production o

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Michelle Cliff

  Michelle Cliff (born 2 November 1946) is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.
  
  Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. Cliff is a lesbian who grew up in Jamaica.
  
  Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New York City three years later. She was educated at Wagner College and the Warburg Institute at the University of London. She has held academic positions at several colleges including Trinity College an

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  David Henry Hwang

  David Henry Hwang (Chinese: 黃哲倫; pinyin: Huáng Zhélún; born August 11, 1957) is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.
  
  He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University. His first play was produced at the Okada House dormitory at Stanford and he briefly studied playwriting with Sam Shepard and María Irene Fornés.
  
  He is the author of M. Butterfly (1988 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Awards, Pulitzer finalist), Golden Child (1998 Tony nomination, 1997 OBIE Award), FOB (1981 OBIE Award), The Dance and the Railroad (Drama Desk nomination), Family Devotions (Drama Desk Nomination), Sound and Beauty, and Bondage. His newest

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Maggie Nelson

  Maggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestseller The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (Norton, 2011; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Bluets (Wave Books, 2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts (Free Press, 2007; reissued by Graywolf, 2016), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (U of Iowa Press, 2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005; finalist for the PEN/ M

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Suzan-Lori Parks is an award-winning American playwright and screenwriter. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002. She is married to blues musician Paul Oscher.
  
  

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Paula Vogel

  Paula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, How I Learned to Drive.
  
  Vogel was born in Washington, D.C. to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita Bremerman, a secretary for United States Postal Service Training and Development Center. She is a graduate of The Catholic University of America (1974, B.A.) and Cornell University (1976, M.A.). Vogel also attended Bryn Mawr College from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972.
  
  A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence with her AIDS-related seriocomedy The Baltimore Waltz, which won the Obie award for Best Play in 1992. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-w

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Chris Kraus

  Chris Kraus is a writer and critic. She studied acting and spent almost two decades making performances and experimental films in New York before moving to Los Angeles where she began writing. Her novels include Aliens & Anorexia, I Love Dick, Torpor, and Summer of Hate. She has published three books of cultural criticism—Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, Where Art Belongs, and Social Practices. I Love Dick was adapted for television and her literary biography After Kathy Acker was published by Semiotext(e) and Penguin Press. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Kraus held the Mary Routt Chair of Writing at Scripps College in 2019 and was Writer-in-Residence at ArtCenter College between 2020–2024. She has written for vario

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Sheila Heti

  Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? Her upcoming novel, Pure Colour, will be published on February 15, 2022.
  
  Her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro, will be published in May 2022.
  
  She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages.
  
  Motherhood was chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Duncan Macmillan

  This page is for the English playwright. For the Scottish art historian, see Duncan Macmillan.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Anthony Neilson

  Anthony Neilson (born 1967) is a Scottish playwright and director. He is known for his collabo rative way of writing and workshopping his plays. Much of his work is characterised by the exploration of sex and violence.
  
  Neilson has been cited as a key figure of In-yer-face theatre, a term used to characterise new plays with a confrontational style and sensibility that emerged in British theatre during the 1990s. He has been credited with coining the phrase "in-your-face theatre" but has rejected the label and instead describes his work as “'experiential' theatre”.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Lucy Prebble

  Lucy Prebble is a British playwright. She is the author of the plays The Sugar Syndrome, The Effect and ENRON, and adaptation writer of the television series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Layli Long Soldier

  Layli Long Soldier is the author of WHERREAS, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Ryka Aoki

  Ryka Aoki is a writer, performer, judo black belt, and professor of English at Santa Monica College.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Dominique Morisseau

  Dominique Morisseau is an American playwright and actress from Detroit, Michigan. She has authored over nine plays, three of which are part of a cycle titled The Detroit Projects. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship for 2018.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Eimear McBride

  Eimear McBride was born in Liverpool in 1976 to Irish parents. The family moved back to Ireland when she was three. She spent her childhood in Sligo and Mayo. Then, at the age of 17, she moved to London.

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, a children’s book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the Unit

  Buy books on Amazon
• 

  Louis A. Pérez Jr.

  Louis A. Pérez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also the Editor of the Cuban Journal.
  
  Principal research interests center on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Caribbean, with emphasis on Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Current research project explores the sources of Cuban nationality and identity.

  Buy books on Amazon