Paulo Coelho

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paulo Coelho
Violinist Lord Menuhin and Coelho at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in 1999
Born	August 24, 1947 (age 66) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Occupation	Novelist, Lyricist, Musician
Nationality	Brazilian
Genres	Drama, Self-improvement, Psychology

Paulo Coelho (Portuguese: [ˈpawlu kuˈeʎu]; born August 24, 1947), is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. He has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today.^{[citation needed]} He is the recipient of numerous international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. The Alchemist, his most famous novel, has been translated to 67 languages.^[1] The author has sold 150 million copies worldwide.

Read more

Stephen King

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other people named Stephen King, see Stephen King (disambiguation).

Stephen King
Stephen King, February 2007
Born	Stephen Edwin King September 21, 1947 (age 66) Portland, Maine, US
Pen name	Richard Bachman, John Swithen
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, columnist, actor, television producer, film director
Alma mater	University of Maine (B.A., English, 1970)
Period	1967–present[1]
Genres	Horror, fantasy, science fiction, drama, gothic, genre fiction, dark fantasy, post-apocalyptic fiction
Notable work(s)	Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Misery, It, and The Dark Tower
Notable award(s)	Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award
Spouse(s)	Tabitha King (1971-present)
Children	Naomi King Joe King Owen King
www.stephenking.com

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies^[2] and many of them have been adapted into feature films, television movies and comic books. King has published fifty novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.
King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society Awards, his novella The Way Station was a Nebula Award novelette nominee,^[3] and his short story "The Man in the Black Suit" received the O. Henry Award. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.^[4] He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire oeuvre, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).^[5]

Read more

C. S. Lewis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

C. S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis aged 50
Born	Clive Staples Lewis 29 November 1898 Belfast, Ireland
Died	22 November 1963 (aged 64) Oxford, England
Occupation	Novelist, scholar, broadcaster
Genres	Christian apologetics, fantasy, science fiction, children's literature
Notable work(s)	The Chronicles of Narnia Mere Christianity The Allegory of Love The Screwtape Letters The Space Trilogy Till We Have Faces Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
Spouse(s)	Joy Davidman (m. 1956; wid. 1960)

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University (Magdalen College), 1925–1954, and Cambridge University (Magdalene College), 1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends. Both authors served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and both were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptized in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England".^[1] His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
In 1956, he married the American writer Joy Davidman, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age of 45. Lewis died three years after his wife, from renal failure, one week before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal; he died on 22 November 1963—the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the same day another famous author, Aldous Huxley, died. This has led to the date of his death often being overshadowed by that of Kennedy. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
Lewis's works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio, and cinema.

Read more

Ernest Hemingway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Hemingway" redirects here. For other uses, see Hemingway (disambiguation).

Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway at Sun Valley, Idaho, 1939
Born	Ernest Miller Hemingway July 21, 1899 Oak Park, Illinois, U.S.
Died	July 2, 1961 (aged 61) Ketchum, Idaho, U.S.
Notable award(s)	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953) Nobel Prize in Literature (1954)
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1921–1927) Pauline Pfeiffer (1927–1940) Martha Gellhorn (1940–1945) Mary Welsh Hemingway (1946–1961)
Children	Jack, Patrick, Gregory

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926.
After his 1927 divorce from Hadley Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer; they divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War where he had been a journalist, and after which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940; they separated when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. He was present at the Normandy Landings and the liberation of Paris.
Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida (1930s) and Cuba (1940s and 1950s), and in 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

Read more

Douglas Adams

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other people named Douglas Adams, see Douglas Adams (disambiguation).

Born	11 March 1952 Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Died	11 May 2001 (aged 49) Santa Barbara, California, United States
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery, London, England
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	St John's College, Cambridge
Genres	Science fiction, comedy, satire
douglasadams.com

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English writer, humourist, and dramatist.
Adams is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.^[1]
Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.
Adams became known as an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, and also as a lover of fast cars, cameras, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh. He was a staunch atheist, famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" to demonstrate his view that the fine-tuned Universe argument for God was a fallacy.^[2] Biologist Richard Dawkins dedicated his book The God Delusion (2006) to Adams, writing on his death that "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender."^[3]

Read more