Mariatu Kamara
Mariatu Kamara was born and raised in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Her harrowing experiences as a child victim of war and its aftermath are the subject of her memoir, The Bite of the Mango (2008).
Today, Mariatu is a college student in Toronto. She was named a UNICEF Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, which involves speaking to groups across North America about her experiences. Prior to her UNICEF engagement, Mariatu spoke publicly for the nonprofit group Free the Children. She has also traveled extensively speaking to high school students and organizations about her physical and emotional journey from a child victim of war in Sierra Leone to a successful author, public speaker and student in Canada. She was
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Will Schwalbe
Greetings! Since we are both here, I’m guessing you are probably a fellow book-lover. Always great to meet other members of the tribe!
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I’ve put a lot about myself in my books, but here are some of the basics. I was born in New York in 1962; grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts; went to boarding school in New Hampshire, and to college in New Haven, Connecticut. So I consider myself a New Englander, even though I’m not one by birth.
I’ve worked as a journalist, in the television business, and even (briefly, in college) as a substitute teacher. But I’ve spent most of my life in publishing: at William Morrow, and then at Hyperion, where I was Editor in Chief. In January 2008, I left Hyperion to found a startup called Cookstr.com and ran that for -
Sandra Uwiringiyimana
Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a member of the Banyamulenge tribe (also referred to as Tutsi Congolese), and was born in South Kivu, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but spent the majority of her childhood in the Congolese city of Uvira. She is a survivor of the Second Congo War, and the 2004 massacre at the refugee camp in Gatumba Burundi by the National Liberation Front of Burundi. She spent a few years in Africa as a stateless refugee, before the U.N. offered them a chance to relocate to America in late 2005. The application and screening process took years, but in April 2007 the family left Africa for Rochester New York.
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Mitch Albom
Author, screenwriter, philanthropist, journalist, and broadcaster Mitch Albom is an inspiration around the world. His fiction and non-fiction books — which include 8 #1 New York Times bestsellers — have collectively sold 42 million copies worldwide in 48 languages. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, the bestselling memoir of all time, topped the list for four straight years and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022. He has also written Emmy Award-winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. Through his work at the Detroit Free Press, he was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports halls of fame and was the recipient of the Red Smith Award for lifetime achieveme
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Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
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She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership -
Bill Clinton
Economic expansion and the first balanced federal budget in three decades marked presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, known as Bill, who served forty-second in the United States from 1993 to 2001; the House of Representatives in 1999 impeached him on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, but the Senate acquitted him on both counts.
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Born William Jefferson Blythe III, he ranked as the third-youngest president, older only than Theodore Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. People know him the first baby-boomer president at the end of the Cold War. He is the husband of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior senator from New York and a Democratic candidate in the election of 2008 in the United States.
People described Clinton as a New Demo -
Dean Koontz
Acknowledged as "America's most popular suspense novelist" (Rolling Stone) and as one of today's most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Ray Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human.
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Dean, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.
Facebook: Facebook.com/DeanKoontzOfficial
Twitter: @DeanKoontz
Website: DeanKoontz.com -
Scott Westerfeld
Scott Westerfeld is a New York Times bestselling author of YA. He is best known for the Uglies and Leviathan series. His current series, IMPOSTORS, returns to the world of Uglies.
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The next book in that series, MIRROR'S EDGE, comes out April 6, 2021. -
Ishmael Beah
Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998 and finished his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York. In 2004 he graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in political science.
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He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee and has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by the war. His work has appeared in VespertinePress and LIT magazine. He lives in New York City.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/ishmae... -
John O'Hara
American writer John Henry O'Hara contributed short stories to the New Yorker and wrote novels, such as BUtterfield 8 (1935) and Ten North Frederick (1955).
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Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O... -
Jennifer Donnelly
Jennifer Donnelly is the author of fourteen novels - Beastly Beauty, Poisoned, Stepsister, Lost in a Book, These Shallow Graves, Sea Spell, Dark Tide, Rogue Wave, Deep Blue, Revolution, A Northern Light, The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose and The Wild Rose - and Humble Pie, a picture book for children. She is a co-author of Fatal Throne, which explores the lives of King Henry VIII's six wives, for which she wrote the part of Anna of Cleves, Henry's fourth wife.
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In 2023, she published Molly's Letter, the first in a series of novella-length stories called Rose Petals set in the world of her three-volume Tea Rose series -- followed by Where Roses Fall in August, 2024.
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Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Northern Irish actor and film director.
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Nicholas D. Kristof
Nicholas Donabet Kristof is an American journalist, author, op-ed columnist, and a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He has written an op-ed column for The New York Times since November 2001 and is widely known for bringing to light human rights abuses in Asia and Africa, such as human trafficking and the Darfur conflict. He has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 160 countries and all 50 states. According to his blog, during his travels he has had "unpleasant experiences with malaria, wars, an Indonesian mob carrying heads on pikes, and an African airplane crash".
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Elinor Lipman
I love talking with readers - for 1:1s and Book Club visits, find me on Skolay: www.skolay.com/writers/elinor-lipman
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Elinor Lipman is the author of 14 humorous novels about contemporary American society; essay and short story collections. Born and raised in Lowell, MA, she divides her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley of New York. She received the New England Book award for fiction in 2001. Her first novel, "Then She Found Me," was adapted for the screen, starring Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. Her fourth novel, "The Inn at Lake Devine" was adapted for the off-off Broadway stage by Tongue in Cheek Theater. In 2011-2012, she held the Elizabeth Drew chair in creative writing at Smith College. Her novel, -
Benson Deng
Benson Deng (born 1984) is a South Sudanese writer and one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. He is best known as the co-author of the book They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky (2005).
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The story begins when Benson was seven years old, as part of the Dinka tribe. Sudanese National Islamic militants attacked his village, Juol, Sudan, and he fled with his brother and cousin at the age of five. Wearing only his underwear he, along with thousands of other boys, traveled a thousand miles across Sudan to Ethiopia on foot, without parents, facing crocodiles, yellow fever, chronic hunger and thirst, and militants along the way. Refugee camps which he arrived at like Panyido were already crowded, and contained 50,000 people or more.
In Ethiopia, he learned the -
Joseph Boyden
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
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He grew up in Willowdale, North York, Ontario and attended the Jesuit-run Brebeuf College School. Boyden's father Raymond Wilfrid Boyden was a medical officer renowned for his bravery, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was the highest-decorated medical officer of World War II.
Boyden, of Irish, Scottish and Métis heritage, writes about First Nations heritage and culture. Three Day Road, a novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I, is inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. Boyden's second novel, Through Black Spruce follows the story of Will, son of one of the characters in Three Day Roa -
Karen Connelly
Karen Connelly was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1969, to a large working class family. She's the author of eleven best-selling books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She has read from her work and lectured in Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She has won the Pat Lowther Award for her poetry, the Governor General’s Award for her non-fiction, and Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for New Fiction for her first novel The Lizard Cage. Karen has served on the board member of PEN Canada and has been active in the Free Burma movement. A proficient to fluent speaker of several languages, she divides her time between her home in rural Greece and her home in Toronto, Canada. She is married with a young child.
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Kevin Eastman
Kevin B. Eastman is an American comic book artist, co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
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Will Schwalbe
Greetings! Since we are both here, I’m guessing you are probably a fellow book-lover. Always great to meet other members of the tribe!
Buy books on Amazon
I’ve put a lot about myself in my books, but here are some of the basics. I was born in New York in 1962; grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts; went to boarding school in New Hampshire, and to college in New Haven, Connecticut. So I consider myself a New Englander, even though I’m not one by birth.
I’ve worked as a journalist, in the television business, and even (briefly, in college) as a substitute teacher. But I’ve spent most of my life in publishing: at William Morrow, and then at Hyperion, where I was Editor in Chief. In January 2008, I left Hyperion to found a startup called Cookstr.com and ran that for -
Colleen Houck
New York Times Bestselling Author Colleen Houck is a lifelong reader whose literary interests include action, adventure, science fiction, and romance. Formerly a student at the University of Arizona, she worked as a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter for seventeen years before switching careers to become an author. Colleen lives in Salem, Oregon, with her husband and a huge assortment of plush tigers. Follow her by signing up for her e-newsletter!
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Elizabeth Smart
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Note: This profile is for Elizabeth^^Smart.
The abduction of Elizabeth Smart was one of the most followed child abduction cases of our time. Elizabeth was abducted on June 5, 2002, and her captors controlled her by threatening to kill her and her family if she tried to escape. Fortunately, the police safely returned Elizabeth back to her family on March 12, 2003 after being held prisoner for 9 grueling months.
Through this traumatic experience Elizabeth has become an advocate for change related to child abduction, recovery programs and National legislation. Elizabeth triumphantly testified before her captor and the world about the very private nightmare -
Elinor Florence
My new historical novel Finding Flora, about women homesteaders on the prairies, was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2025.
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My debut novel Bird's Eye View, about a young woman who joins the air force in World War Two and becomes an aerial photographic interpreter, became a Canadian bestseller in 2016.
My second novel Wildwood is about a single mother from the big city who must fulfill the conditions of her inheritance by living for one year in an abandoned, off-the-grid farmhouse in northern Canada.
I grew up on a prairie farm and had a long career in journalism, writing for newspapers and magazines including Reader’s Digest. I even published my own newspaper before turning to fiction.
I self-identify as indigenous, thanks to my Cree anc -
Laura Spence-Ash
Laura Spence-Ash’s fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her critical essays and book reviews appear regularly in the Ploughshares blog. She received her MFA in fiction from Rutgers–Newark, and she lives in New Jersey.
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Sandra Uwiringiyimana
Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a member of the Banyamulenge tribe (also referred to as Tutsi Congolese), and was born in South Kivu, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but spent the majority of her childhood in the Congolese city of Uvira. She is a survivor of the Second Congo War, and the 2004 massacre at the refugee camp in Gatumba Burundi by the National Liberation Front of Burundi. She spent a few years in Africa as a stateless refugee, before the U.N. offered them a chance to relocate to America in late 2005. The application and screening process took years, but in April 2007 the family left Africa for Rochester New York.
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Akemi Dawn Bowman
Akemi Dawn Bowman is a critically-acclaimed author who writes across genres. Her novels have received multiple accolades and award nominations, and her debut novel, STARFISH, was a William C. Morris Award Finalist. She has a BA in social sciences from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and currently lives in Scotland with her family. She overthinks everything, including this bio. You can find Akemi on Instagram @AkemiDawnBowman.
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Benson Deng
Benson Deng (born 1984) is a South Sudanese writer and one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. He is best known as the co-author of the book They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky (2005).
Buy books on Amazon
The story begins when Benson was seven years old, as part of the Dinka tribe. Sudanese National Islamic militants attacked his village, Juol, Sudan, and he fled with his brother and cousin at the age of five. Wearing only his underwear he, along with thousands of other boys, traveled a thousand miles across Sudan to Ethiopia on foot, without parents, facing crocodiles, yellow fever, chronic hunger and thirst, and militants along the way. Refugee camps which he arrived at like Panyido were already crowded, and contained 50,000 people or more.
In Ethiopia, he learned the