Kôbô Abé (1924-1993)
Kôbô Abé is best known to the western world as an avant-guard novelist, but he was also one of Japan's most experimental playwrights. The major themes of his work are the alienation of the individual, the loss of identity, and the absurdity of human existence, which has engendered comparisons to Kafka and Beckett. His writing is stiff and formal, and his scientific detachment enables him to view his characters as if they were insects under a glass. His first crossover novel, The Woman in the Dunes, is an existential piece centered on a man imprisoned as a slave laborer, and the emotional resignation of a life lived for the Sisyphusian purpose of clearing away sand. Over the course of six months in captivity, he runs through the gamut of emotions, from rebellion to benign acceptance. Though the majority of his work remains untranslated, his novels have brought the mind of Kôbô Abé to the west.

Chinua Achebe (b 1930)
Chinua Achebe, the preeminent Nigerian writer, is known for his work focused on the short and long-term effects of English colonization upon Africa's people. His fiction and essays cover the dissolution of an ancient culture forced to give up its heritage by a 'domesticated' invasion. Achebe empowers his reader to come to an understanding of what has been lost to the subjugated culture, and by working in English, he is able to appeal to those responsible. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, follows the swift undoing of a great man by the changes wrought from colonization. Achebe has modeled his work on the African oral tradition that "art is, and always was, at the service of man" and writes stories with a human purpose. As an author, he has used his work to enlighten the world, and allowed us to understand his, remaining true to his heritage of passing down knowledge through the act of telling a story.

Ama Ata Aidoo (b 1940)
Ama Ata Aidoo is a Ghanaian writer, poet and scholar who has used her work to vocalize the concerns of her fellow countrymen, specifically for the heavily oppressed women. She was born into a wealthy family, where she gained a Western education while maintaining a clear sense of African traditions. Aidoo was enabled to develop her own opinions on the interrelationship between the two cultures. Her first play was produced in 1964 — “The Dilemma of a Ghost” made her a vocal figure in the struggle against imperialism and racism, and launched her into a central feminist role. The plot centers on a young man returning from the United States who brings the “seeds of conflict” to his home life due to his experiences abroad; it is his mother who heals the family back together. She has been committed to using African oral traditions of story telling and her narrative technique mirrors this; she weaves poetry and prose together, appealing directly to the reader. Aidoo also took a strong stance against the corruption and hypocrisy of the national bourgeoisie in post-independence Ghana, targeting them for turning their backs on the country in favor of a more material Western existence. Her work continues to engender debate about the impact of colonialism/capitalism on indigenous culture.

Wang Anyi (b 1954)
Wang Anyi is a Chinese writer who captured the true spirit of the underclass in Shanghai, and is a representative of the generation of artists whose formal education was disrupted by the Cultural Revolution. Her early short fiction was based entirely on her own experiences; it was her objective to represent her subjects with truth and honesty. Her characters were not openly rebellious, but expressed their inner feelings with a quiet self confidence and will for survival. After participating in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and traveled through Asia, her work moved away from socialist realism into psychological exploration. Anyi’s portrayal of female sexuality and strength was attacked conservative Chinese critics, but she felt that the “spirit of self-examination is what guarantees that individuals will become real human beings, and that a people will develop into a strong and worth nation.” Her most acclaimed novel bridges the two focuses of her career. In Changhen ge, she follows the aspirations and sufferings of a former beauty pageant winner through the political storms of Shanghai. Anyi continues to publish essays, journalism, travel writings, literary criticism, and memoirs.

James Baldwin (1924-1987)
James Baldwin’s novels, short stories, essays and plays enriched America in two ways—with the controversial work of a black author at a time when the civil rights movement demanded one, and with the literary verve of an openly gay writer before the gay rights movement knew it needed one. Baldwin appears to have derived his impassioned style from being raised one of nine children of a Pentecostal preacher in Harlem, New York, as well as from his own experience as a preacher starting at the age of 14. His debut novel Go Tell it on the Mountain, an autobiographical account of poverty and sexual awakening during his adolescence, made his name on the literary scene. Baldwin’s essays were a fiery catalyst during the early years of civil rights activism in America. Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time brought moving insight into the struggle of racism to a large white audience, while drawing criticism from the black community for their pacifist stance. Baldwin started to write more brashly about homosexuality and interracial relationships in his novels. The controversial Giovanni’s Room, an excruciating tale of love, loss and sexual identity set against chilling descriptions of Paris, has become a classic of gay literature. Though he occasionally returned to New York to lecture or teach, from 1948 onward Baldwin lived mainly in the south of France. There he continued, until his death in 1987, to produce the works that have made him one of literature’s most respected advocates of equality.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
Aphra Behn established herself as the first professional female author in England and paved the way for other female artists. She began earning a living as a playwright and novelist after returning from the Caribbean in 1658. Her most prominent novel, Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave, introduces the concept of the 'noble savage' to Western literature in an attempt to alert Europeans to the exploitation of Caribbean slaves. All of her work explores issues of gender, race and class. Little is known about her life, but her legacy to literature has earned respect from preeminent female writers, including Virginia Woolf, who wrote, "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

Paul Bowles (1910-1999)
An obsessive traveler, composer and writer, Paul Bowles set out to forge his own path in the world. He left the US with a copy of André Gide's The Counterfeiters and dreams of becoming an artistic ex-patriot. This young, handsome man was quickly adopted by the Parisian arts scene, where Gertrude Stein suggested he visit Morocco—Bowles would spend the bulk of his adult life there, and the country would become the backdrop for most of his work. His fiction typically centered on American tourists in exotic and increasingly hostile environments, their modernized lives disintegrating in their search for meaning. His most successful novel, The Sheltering Sky, chronicles a couple wandering through North Africa as they lose their identities to the ceaseless sands of the desert. Bowles' unconventional marriage to Jane Auer Bowles, his drug habits, and his close relationships with young men, lent him a degree of infamy sought after by the Beats, who followed in his footsteps. Bowles released four novels, more than sixty short stories, and numerous musical scores, while living life by his own rules.

André Breton (1896-1966)
French poet, essayist and writer, André Breton, was one of the co-founders of the Surrealist movement with Paul Eluard, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dali, among others. He established himself as the “leader” of the movement with the publication of the first Manifesto of Surrealism, which tried to illuminate the principals of this evolving school of thought. Surrealism was not an artistic movement, as it is often referred to today, but a way of life, a constant revolt against the conformities of thought and an attempt to redefine the human mind and spirit. Stemming from the work of Freud and the subconscious, the movement wanted to achieve a vantage point from which “life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, communicable and incommunicable, high and low, will no longer be perceived as contradictions.” The act of creation was a way to tap into the power of the unconscious mind, bringing with it the creation of a new mythology to join humanity together. Breton’s was primarily a poet, but it is his three manifestos for which he is most remembered, as well as the novel, Nadja, which was written utilizing the Surrealist doctrines.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)
Charlotte Brontë, along with her sisters, Anne and Emily, and brother Branwell, were raised in relative poverty and isolation in the north of England. Their isolation encouraged the children to play together, and they created fantasies and dramatic characters for their entertainment, often influenced by the stories of the violent behavior of the townsfolk. These elements, along with the desolate landscape of the moors, fed directly into each of the Brontës' work. As Charlotte matured, she found it difficult to make her way in the world as a single, underprivileged woman. The opportunities open to her were limited; she attempted a position as governess, but failed due to her overwhelming shyness, and being separated from her beloved sisters. Her attempts at writing were thwarted by Robert Southey, who cautioned the young woman that “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.” Her book of poems was released and sold only two copies, her first novel, The Professor, went unpublished during her life. Undeterred by rejection, and bellied by the success of her sisters' novels, Charlotte published Jane Eyre; it was received with great acclaim. The novel incorporates Charlotte’s experiences as a governess, and challenged the strict econmic and social conventions forced on women of her time. Unfortunately, she was unable to follow the success – all of her close siblings died in quick succession, leaving Charlotte alone. She died in childbirth at the age of 39, but her rebellious spirit lives on in the guise of Jane Eyre.

Lenny Bruce (1925-1966)
Lenny Bruce should be named the Patron Saint of the First Amendment; the endless series of obscenity charges that plagued the latter half of his career destroyed Bruce, but his court battles forced America to redefine how it interpreted "free" speech. The edgy comedian had an uncompromisingly frank delivery, and took on organized religion, government, war, sex and other taboo targets of the conservative 1950’s and 60’s. His intent was to wake up his audience to the things that disgusted him about America—greed, hypocrisy and repression—but he garnered more attention for his use of sexual references and obscenities. In 1961, after being charged for using the word “cocksucker”, Bruce was sucked into an endless legal battle from which he never recovered. A string of obscenity charges, drug charges and legal fees quickly destroyed him; he overdosed on morphine at the age of 40. Lenny Bruce was a true iconoclast who helped expose the hypocrisies of American culture, and has posthumously been heralded for his inflexible stance to protect his right to free speech.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)
Charles Bukowski did not begin his writing career until 35 after an alcoholic near-death experience, but made up for lost time by deluging literary magazines with his brutally honest poetry. "My contribution," he wrote in 1974, "was to loosen and simplify poetry to make it more human." His work stemmed from his real life, including drunken brawls, horse-racing and whores. Bukowski's poetry readings were infamous for their debaucheries, and he won over many acolytes through the freedom expressed in his poetry and his life. His popularity skyrocketed with the release of Barfly, an autobiographical movie based on his second novel, Factotum. He was a unique artist living outside of the rules of society, and writing with the keen eye of an outsider. He published over sixty books - poetry, short stories and novels.

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993)
Although his first love was music, Anthony Burgess will best be remembered as a novelist, his style characterized by verbal inventiveness and social satire. He wrote comparatively little until 1959, but began to write at a feverish pace after receiving a misdiagnoses of a terminal cerebral tumor; he wanted to ensure an income for his wife, Llwela Isherwood Jones. He kept that pace long after the twelve months he had been given to live, writing prolifically for the next 33 years, and produced over fifty books, hundreds of journalistic pieces, and three symphonies. His revolutionary eighth novel, A Clockwork Orange, is his most heralded work. It speaks to the behaviorist arguments of rehabilitating prisoners; is it better to condition a man to do good despite himself or to have an individual who has freedom of choice, even if that choice is to do evil? The novel is written in nadsat, a mixture of Russian, English and American slang, revealing the linguistic prowess of the author. A number of his novels use a futuristic landscape on which to address current issues, including The Wanting Seed, which addresses overpopulation and the mismanagement of government. He continued to write and compose up until shortly before his death, when cancer finally claimed him.

William Burroughs (1914-1997)
William Burroughs did not set out to become a writer, but went in search of a criminal life after graduating from Harvard. He met up with Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in New York, becoming a mentor to the younger men; they became collectively known as the Beats. Wanting to belong to the “community of outlaws”, Burroughs began buying stolen goods, including morphine Syrettes, which introduced him to a lifetime of addiction. He and his wife, Joan Vollmer, a Benzedrine addict, moved to New Orleans (as immortalized in Kerouac’s On The Road), Texas and Mexico City in search of inexpensive drugs. Burroughs published his first novel, Junk, under the pseudonym of William Lee – the factual novel describes his life as a junkie. After accidentally shooting his wife in 1951, Burroughs went in search of a hallucinogen used by South America Indians, and documented his quest in a series of letters to Allen Ginsberg, published as The Yage Letters. Finally, Burroughs settled in Tangier where he could live inexpensively and support his drug habits, writing a number of novels, short stories and essays. Burroughs saw the writer as outlaw, creating a “literature of risk”. His work is heavily influenced by drugs, written in a fragmented and often hyper-stimulated style. He became more controversial by the depiction of his sexual relationships with young men. Burroughs is an essential segment of queer and drug-culture literature, and continues to challenge mainstream values.

Truman Capote (1924-1984)
Truman Capote was an author and playwright who gained international fame for his vanguard "nonfiction novel", In Cold Blood. The frail southern boy was raised by relatives during his parents’ separation, and wove those experiences into his short fiction, notably in The Grass Harp. At 17, he ended his formal education and found work at the New Yorker, where he was known for his peculiar dress and sharp wit. Capote established his literary fame at a very young age, and was honored with the O. Henry Award for his short fiction. He left for Europe and wrote extensively, including work for the stage and screen. After returning to the states, he created his most memorable character, Holly Golightly, for Breakfast at Tiffany’s; she was based on a pastiche of female acquaintances, and cast himself as her confidante. It was his obsession with the murder of a Midwestern family that would become his greatest success and lead to his own self-destruction. Over the course of six years he interviewed the friends and family of the deceased, and became emotionally attached to the murderers, gaining their confidence to obtain the whole story. The resulting novel, In Cold Blood, set the standard for journalistic fiction. However, the experience destroyed him and he we was unable to finish another project. Capote quickly succumbed to problems with drugs and alcohol and aliened his friends, peers and audience with lethal barbs in print and in public. He died in his LA home from liver complications.

Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Willa Cather skillfully crafted rustic worlds through minimalistic prose. Her unencumbered text frees her to give an immediate sense of time and place, most notably in her depictions of nature and the movement of light; these passages move towards the spiritual in their simplicity. Willa Cather is one of the few women who have earned a place in the male dominated cannon, and her work has recently been rediscovered by a new generation of readers. She is best remembered for her novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, but wrote extensively including other novels, short stories and essays.

Simin Daneshvar (b 1921)
Simin Daneshvar began her writing career early, publishing her first article as an eighth grader in her local Shiraz newspaper. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Persian literature from Tehran University, and accepted a post as associate professor of art history. Although she held this post for twenty years, she was denied a full professorship by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, due to her outspoken nature and affiliations. After her husband's death, Daneshvar assumed the leading role of the Writer's Association, which her husband, author Al-E Ahmad, had founded. The organization provided moral support for intellectuals and dissidents opposed to the Pahlavi regime. She had worked briefly as a journalist to support her family, but later turned to fiction where her journalistic skills helped define her style. In her first collection of short stories, Atash-e Khamoush (The Quenched Fire), Daneshvar spotlighted issues in Iranian society. Her major work, Savushun (The Mourners) was the first book written by an Iranian woman from a woman's perspective. The novel integrates social events, traditional customs and beliefs into a haunting story about one family's stand against an invading army. Her work has gained her recognition as one of the most valuable modern Persian authors.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Emily Dickinson was a lyrical and prolific poet, writing more than 1800 poems, yet only seven were published during her lifetime - she had been advised not to publish or pursue a literary career by her friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Little is known about Dickinson's life, she withdrew from social contact at the age of 23 and devoted her life in secret to writing. She originated the myth of poet as unconventional recluse, preferring the seclusion of her room and garden, wearing only white, maintaining relationships via correspondence only. It has been conjectured that her withdrawal from life was due to the chaos of the Civil War and the ills of society - her central themes are natural and human violence, funerals and most notably, pain itself. Despite her self-imposed isolation, Dickinson was a voracious reader and was well aware of her peers, whom she called the "dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of soul". She was posthumously recognized as one of the most innovative poets of the 19th century; her frequent used of dashes, sporadic capitalization, off-rhymes, broken meter and unconventional metaphors laid the groundwork for the modern poets she inspired. The bulk of her work was published in three volumes by her sister, Lavinia, and her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, in the years following her death.

Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)
Marguerite Duras was an author, playwright and noted screenwriter. She was born in Indochina (now Vietnam) where she spent the bulk of her childhood before moving to France; Duras drew on her childhood experiences as background for a number of her novels. Much of her work meditates on sex and death, as well as examining the power of words, remembering, forgetting, and feelings of alienation. With her fiction, she broke from traditional narrative in an attempt to capture the inner lives of her characters; this style carried over into her screenwriting. Duras wrote the screenplay for Alain Resnai's Hiroshima Mon Amour, which was lauded for its innovative use of flashbacks to progress the story. The movie centers on a brief love affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect, and draws parallels between their fractures lives after WWII, and the bombed-out Hiroshima where the film is set. It was a milestone of the French New Wave movement. Duras wrote a number of screenplays, and a number of her 70 novels were turned adapted for film.

Bob Dylan (b 1941)
Singer and song writer Bob Dylan gave a powerful voice to the folk movement of the 60s. He joined the folk music scene during his freshman year of college and dropped out to pursue music. With his distinctive rough-hewn voice he challenged the standard that a signer had to sound “good” in order to succeed. Dylan left Minneapolis for Greenwich Village, where he immersed himself in the scene and honed his political ballads with poetic influences from Rimbaud and Keats. His “Blowin’ in the Wind” became an anthem for the counter-culture fighting a war and made him a household name overnight. He delivered his message in an unconventional blend of country, R&B, rock and folk music that defined a genre. His music was covered by over a hundred bands in the mid 60’s, including Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Baez. When he switched from folk to rock, his original audience greeted him with derision, but he found a new home in the emerging rock and roll community. In the mid-70’s, Dylan began touring extensively, jamming with other folk and rock singers while he evolved his sound. Over the next thirty years, he broke new ground in music, both in rock and political folk, and remained an influence on countless musicians.

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)
Raised in the newly formed state of Oklahoma where race was not yet an issue, Ellison was empowered by the knowledge that he could perform as well or better than his contemporaries of any race. When he left Oklahoma for a southern college, he was introduced to the realities of discrimination. This period was the basis for his novel, Invisible Man, which documented the gradual transition of a naive young African-American man, to something of a spiritual prophet. This novel should not be read just as an accurate commentary on race relations (sadly as true today as it was when published in 1952) but also as a blueprint to the evolution of one's own personality shaped by life's events.

Buchi Emecheta (b 1944)
Buchi Emecheta has utilized her experiences as an African woman fighting for her rights, and as a single mother of five, as the background for the bulk of her fiction. Emecheta left Nigeria for London at the age of 16 with her new husband; six years later she took her children and went out on her own, earning a sociology degree from the University of London while she struggled against discrimination and poverty. Her unique voice and circumstances have engendered support from both feminist and literary communities. It is her work dealing with her native Africa for which she is most heralded. Two of her novels, The Joys of Motherhood, about a young mother of five in the political upheaval of Nigeria, and the Rape of Shavi, a philosophical novel dealing with the impact of westernization on the people of Africa, have garnered an international audience. Emecheta's work continues to be an inspiration to other female and African writers and enlightening the Black experience.

John Fante (1909 - 1983)
John Fante spent his early years in poverty and suffered the anti-Italian prejudices of the time, but his intense determination to become a writer, and a megalomanical attitude, blinded him to all else. He dropped out of college and escaped to California, where he lived in boarding houses, writing with minor success. By 1936, he'd adopted the first of his alter egos, Artuor Bandini, and published his first novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini. Some reviewers called it "the best novel of the year." His career reached an early pinnacle with the publication of his third novel, Ask the Dust, which is considered his masterpiece. His success did not continue; unable to support himself and his family with writing, he turned to Hollywood and began writing screenplays, which he described as "the most disgusting job in Christ's kingdom". During this time his fiction languished and Fante's name faded into the past. In 1978, Charles Bukowski, who claimed "Fante is my god", demanded the republication of Ask the Dust as a condition of his contract with Black Sparrow Press. Fante's work was rediscovered by a new generation of readers, and all of his novels—even those that had been previously rejected—were subsequently published and continue to be in print.

Jean Genet (1910-1986)
Jean Genet, author and convicted felon, was one of the leading dramatists of avant-garde theater. Abandoned by his unwed mother, Genet lived his childhood as a ward of the state, shuttled between institutions and a foster family in rural France. He discovered the pleasure of stealing at the age of 10; it became a lifelong vocation and was explored as a "religious devotion" in his autobiographic novel The Thief's Journal. In 1948 Genet was convicted of burglary for the 10th time and condemned to automatic life imprisonment. However his work had gained the attention of writers Jean-Paul Sartre, André Gide and Jean Cocteau, who successfully petitioned for his release. Genet had built his early reputation on fiction, his novels glorifying thievery and homosexuality, but turned to the stage in the late 1940's and set the bar for experimental theater. He abandoned the traditional concepts of character, plot and motivation, staging his plays in nihilistic landscapes populated by underworld figures and anti-heroes. His play, The Balcony, was set within a brothel during a revolution, where men's fantasies of empowerment are entertained during a revolution. The clients who have been acting as heads of state during their sex-play are placed into power when the original figureheads are pulled down; a new revolution begins. Genet's contribution to literature and theater destroyed many of the bourgeois taboos on content and presentation and paved the way for other explorations.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Vincent van Gogh did not originally commit himself to being an artist, but worked unsuccessfully at a series of employments, including a brief stint as a preacher where we was dismissed for being overzealous. He studied art in Belgium with the ideal of giving happiness by creating beauty. Van Gogh was initially inspired by the works of Rubens and Japanese prints; this lent his early work a stark and somber tone. When he joined his brother, Théo, in Paris, he was introduced to the Impressionists and incorporated their short strokes into his technique. However, his off-putting temperament made him an unwelcome guest among his peers, and his zealous painting schedule took a toll on his health. He left for Arles hoping to regain his health and establish a school of art. His isolation allowed him to freely experiment with technique and develop his ability to express motion and emotion through intense color and vibrant structure. He drifted between lucidity and madness during this period, which was aggravated by his poverty and sole focus on his work. Van Gogh was admitted to an asylum and appeared to regain stability, but shot himself two months after his release, “for the good of all”. During his brief career he sold only one painting and relied almost exclusively on his brother for financial support. Van Gogh was posthumously recognized for the intense passion that brought to the canvas and remains one of the most competitively collected of the modern artists.

Natalya Sergeevna Goncharova (1881-1962)
Natalya Sergeevna Goncharova grew up on her grandparent's estate in central Russia, where she was deeply affected by the peasant culture and folk art of the surrounding countryside; its influence would play heavily in her artwork. Over the course of her studies, she embraced the western avant-garde movement, experimenting with impressionism, fauvism, cubism, and futurism. However, Goncharova recognized the beauty in traditional Russian artwork, including the lubok (prints from woodcuts), as well as the peasant costumes and the decorations of everyday objects. She merged the two styles together, juxtaposing the form and color of each into a branch of neo-primitivism. Although she did not turn away completely from western art, she and her life long partner, Mikhail Lorionov, formed a group in opposition to the heavy reliance on western influences. The group, called "The Donkey's Tail", had one exhibition. Its focus on modernized Russian icon art, which had a long religious history, caused an uproar in the artistic world. She continued to experiment, working with Lorinonov's theory of rayonism, where every object has a relationship with others through a network of connecting invisible rays of light, designed as way to "capture" speed. Eventually she left Russia for Paris, where she continued to paint as well as designed stage sets.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Zora Neale Hurston was one of the strongest literary voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Her body of work is rich in the folklore, traditions and culture of southern African Americans. Her work was almost lost to obscurity, but was rediscovered and republished by Alice Walker. Ms. Hurston's extremely powerful novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), was embroiled in controversy for depicting a strong, independent African American woman in an era before the Civil Rights or Equal Rights movements. Ms. Hurston has posthumously been recognized for her contribution to American literature and anthropology.

Alfred Jarry (1873-1907)
Alfred Jarry penned Ubu Roi, a parody of Macbeth, at the age of fifteen to lambaste his pompous mathematics teacher. The first live production of the play was staged in Paris in 1896, and caused a riot after the first line was shoved upon the audience, “Merde!”. The play was an instant scandal due to the coarse language and anarchistic tones, and was the only work of Jarry’s produced during his lifetime. He wrote two sequels to Ubu Roi, as well as fiction and poetry, but all of his work was banned from publication. Jarry, penniless after spending his small inheritance, quickly became a frequent character of the Bohemian nightlife. He slowly devolved into his own creation, taking on the affectations and dress of Ubu Roi, and always carried his character’s signature green umbrella. Jarry died of alcoholism and tuberculosis at the age of 34, but his work went on to inspire the Absurdists, André Breton, and J.G. Ballard; his Ubu Roi trilogy continues to be performed.

Elfriede Jelinek (b 1946)
Elfriede Jelinek is an influential contemporary novelist and dramatist, although her work is relatively unknown outside her native Austria and Germany. Her fiction has been described as pornographic due to her frank descriptions of sex and violence, but her overt political stance against the extreme right has kept many critics from dismissing her work as prurient. Jelinek explores relationships of power, control and manipulation, and has often been noted as a feminist, though her work is not specific to gender issues. Jelinek's most widely recognized book, Wonderful, Wonderful Times, is told from the perspective of four young criminals living a pointless life of crime and rebellion in a world "without history" of post WWII Austria. One of the characters is inspired by the existentionalism of Camus', The Stranger, seeking the path of murder as a way to escape the meaninglessness of life. Her dramatic work continues the tradition of anti-theater begun by Brecht, rejecting illusions that create distance between the audience and the actors. Two of her plays, Bambiland, partly inspired by Aeschylus' The Persians, and the sequel, Babel, have dealt with the Iraq war. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004, the 10th woman to do so, but declined attending the ceremony due to her social phobia.

James Joyce (1882-1941)
James Joyce was an expatriate of his native Ireland, but the politics, history and mythology of his homeland remained the foundation for all of his work. He is credited with introducing stream of consciousness to fiction, and wove Freud's psychology, social theories and Greek mythology into his work. His landmark novel, Ulysses, was originally published in France due to censorship in the United Kingdom and America, but its revolutionary presentation ensured its underground success. His final work, Finnegans Wake, advanced the deconstruction of the novel, the fragmentation of story, and focused on the dreams of the main character. Joyce's body of work remains controversial, and is dense enough to fulfill his answer to why his work was written in a very difficult style, "To keep the critics busy for three hundred years."

Franz Kafka (1925-1992)
Although the majority of Franz Kafka's work was unfinished, his supporter and biographer, Max Brod, was able to save it from destruction and arranged its posthumous publication. The Czech-born German's fiction is noted for the modernist alienation of his characters, stories in which his almost nameless protagonists are milled through dehumanizing experiences forced upon them, seemingly at random, by faceless and overwhelming adversaries. In most of his fiction, the main character dies from neglect or execution, notably in his fragmentary novel, The Trial, and short story, The Metamorphosis. He worked during the day in the insurance industry and wrote at night. He kept his manuscripts secret, allowed very few people to read his work, and avoided publication. He was constantly torn between desiring a relationship—he had several sexually conflicting affairs with young women—and wishing to completely isolate himself from the world; this social discord is prominent in his work. Kafka suffered from illness most of his life, but when he contracted tuberculosis in 1917, his health gradually deteriorated and ended his life prematurely. Kafka's work has lived on despite his request to have it destroyed after his death, and it he has since been canonized as one of the first modernists.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Frida Kahlo would have only one exhibition in her native Mexico during her lifetime, where a critic noted that her paintings were her biography; an astute comment about this passionate artist. Frida had been physically challenged by a childhood bout with polio, and a later accident which caused severe injury to her pelvis, spine and legs. During her convalescence, she turned to painting as a way to occupy her mind, and painted the first of her self-portraits. Soon after leaving the hospital, Frida married fellow communist and established artist/muralist Diego Rivera, which began a tumultuous relationship that would last through her short life. Her husband introduced her to the international art world, where Frida preferred to be known as a personality rather than a painter. Diego was a philanderer, and it was after his affair with Frida’s younger sister that she turned her anguish and passion into her work and began exhibiting on her own. Her style was influenced by traditional Mexican folk art, but its strength and power came from bringing her own biography to the canvas. She was embraced by the surrealists, though she claimed she was not one of them because “I paint my own reality”. Frida had numerous affairs of her own, with both women and men, most notably communist leader, Leon Trotsky, and peer, Georgia O’Keefe. Towards the end of her life, she was consistently bed-ridden and in chronic pain, but her work and acclaim grew on its own merits. She died, possibly by her own hand, at the age of 47.

John Lennon Lennon (1940-1980) & Yoko Ono (b 1933)
In this new age of confusion and terror we acknowledge two accomplished artists who, combined, tried to turn the world onto peace. John Lennon and Yoko Ono used their music, artwork and most importantly, their own lives, to inspire people to work towards understanding and celebrating our differences. John's lyrics continue to carry the message of peace, hope and imagination to the world a generation after his death. Though "Give Peace A Chance" may seem naive in the face of terrorism, it is still a possibility we can not lose sight of.

Doris Lessing (b 1919)
Iranian-born British writer, Doris Lessing, was raised in Africa, where she helped to start a non-racist left-wing party in the country. She later joined the communist party when she married German political activist, Gottfried Lessing. After the dissolution of her second marriage, Lessing moved to England and released her first novel, The Grass is Singing. Her work deals with people caught in the political and social upheavals of the 20th century, and explores feminist themes and the search for wholeness. These topics are explored in her most widely translated novel, The Golden Notebook, which has been hailed as a literary landmark of the women’s movement. In her novel, The Good Terrorist, she examines the short distance between idealism and terrorism though her protagonist, who considers herself a committed revolutionary but does not understand political movements; she becomes a maternal figure to parasitic companions. Lessing’s semi-autobiographical series of novels, Children of Violence, are considered her most substantial body of work. She continues to write and lecture.

Primo Levi (1919-1987)
Primo Levi was a Jewish writer and chemist whose work objectively chronicled the Holocaust. Levi studied chemistry prior to the Fascists outlawing Jews from academic pursuits; this knowledge enabled him to work as a chemist making rubber for the Nazis war machine. He survived the war by eating cotton and paraffin, and with the aid of non-Jews. After being liberated by the Soviets, Levi began the long odyssey back to his family home in Turin. The first of his auto-biographical novels, If This Is A Man, objectively captured the treatment of prisoners in the concentration camps and how their identities were annihilated. It was published by a small house, but reprinted ten years later; the book sold over half a million copies, was translated into eight languages, and was adapted for theater and radio. The bulk of his work rendered the prolonged tragedy of the Holocaust on humanity with a scientific objectivity, enabling others to comprehend the brutality to which millions had been subjected. He remained pessimistic about humanity. His last work, a collection of essays entitled The Drowned and the Saved, described the dehumanization of the guards and prisoners, stating “Before dying the victim must be degraded, so that the murder will be less burdened by guilt.” Levi may have taken his own life, ending the severe depression and survivor’s guilt that plagued him after the camps.

Audre Lorde (1925-1992)
Audre Lorde was a poet, writer, activist, lecturer, lesbian and mother. Her multi-faceted life was the basis for her body of work, which was a celebration of her uniqueness, especially those parts that society insisted were detrimental—being a woman of color and a lesbian. She wrote to give a voice to women who were too afraid to speak. Her noted collection of poetry, The Black Unicorn, explores the mythology and symbolism of African goddesses, empowering women of color with their heritage, and her compilation of essays, Sister Outsider, remains an important work to the feminist movement. Lorde was a founding member of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which assisted other underrepresented women get their work into publication, and was named Poet Laureate of New York State in 1991. Lorde battled cancer the last 14 years of her life, documenting her personal journey in The Cancer Journals. She succumbed to liver cancer at the age of 58, but her determined spirit lives on in her work.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet and dramatist who, along with poet Dorothy Parker, epitomized the spirit of the New Woman of the 1920's. They lived a modern life in Greenwich Village; sexual freedom, female independence and political activism empowered them to rise from societies' prescribed role and assert themselves as equals. Millay's early work focused on love and her "unconventional" life, and she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry with The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems. After her quick rise she married and moved to upstate New York where she would spend the remainder of her life. Her work became more political, and though she mastered the sonnet, her later poetry lost its vitality. She slowly withdrew from the public eye after a car accident in 1936, and then succumbed to alcohol and drugs. Millay paved the way for women and artists by living her own life, and by encouraging them through her work.

Yukio Mishima (1925-1970)
Yukio Mishima (née Kimitaka Hiraoka) changed his name to avoid his anti-literary father discovering that he wrote. Mishima was raised and over-protected by his paternal grandmother; additionally he was excused from military service, surviving WWII in shame while his peers died in battle. These two influences would haunt him, and his work, until his self-inflicted death at the age of 45. Mishima was prolific, penning 40 novels, poetry, essays, as well as modern Kabuki and Noh dramas. In his first major work, Confessions of a Mask, the autobiographical narrator reveals his homosexuality and admits he will be forced to wear a mask of "normalcy" for the rest of his life. Among his other works are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, which is considered his most lasting achievement. Despite his modernist work, and his inclination to wear western style clothes, Mishima was deeply attracted to the patriotism of imperial Japan and the samurai spirit; some conjecture this allowed him to explore his more sadistic tendencies. He assembled the Shield Society, a private army of 100 youths dedicated to the revival of Bushido, the samurai knightly code of honor. It was before them that he arranged his own death by seppuku (ritual disembowelment) with his own sword, and was ritually decapitated by his followers. Mishima is considered one of the most prominent Japanese authors of the 20th century and was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times.

V.S. Naipaul (b 1932)
V.S. Naipaul's significant body of work is heavily influenced by the circumstances of his life. A Hindu born in Trinidad, and later educated in England, Naipaul has an objective rootlessness that enables him to question societies' archetypes. In his ambitious novel, A House For Mr. Biswas, he skillfully utilizes autobiographical background from his life in the Caribbean to highlight the problems Hindus faced, the double-edged impact of English colonization, and the constant obstacles one man must face in the pursuit of establishing his own identity. His scathing portraits of the Caribbean, India, and Africa have earned him harsh criticism, but ultimately his work transcends the "realities" of societal contstructs to focus on the darker truth.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977)
Anaïs Nin, the French-born surrealistic novelist, eroticist and diarist, was largely ignored for the majority of her career. It was not until the publication of her first diary, when she was 63, that Nin captured the public's attention. Her diaries documented her development as an artist and a woman, and revealed her true sensual nature; Nin maintained an open marriage and had a string of relationships with other men, and possibly women, most of them fellow artists and writers. This frank disclosure of her private life brought her previously written fiction to the fore, and made Nin as infamous as her male counterpart and lover, Henry Miller. For her exploration and honesty, both in her life and her literature, Nin is honored as a revolutionary and a feminist.

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
Flannery O'Connor was a master of the short story, depicting events that were equally comic and brutal. She belonged to the Southern Gothic tradition that skinned off the facade of a genteel society in favor of the indifferent cruelty of real life. One of her most notable stories, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", documents the casual and quiet slaughter of a family by three escaped criminals. O'Connor heightens the sense of irony through the addled grandmother who defends the character of the ringleader before becoming his victim. Though her body of work is small, with just thirty-one short stories, two novels and some essays, her impact on literature is immeasurable. O'Connor succumbed to lupus at the age of 39.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Dorothy Parker, short story writer, poet, critic and screenwriter, was infamous for her wit and cruel humor, especially when tackling taboo subjects. She moved to New York City after the death of her parents and played piano at a dancing school at night to support her writing poetry during the day. She sold her first poetry to Vogue, and later joined the magazine in an editorial position. Parker worked for a variety of New York’s literary magazines for more than a decade, including Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. With two other writers, Parker formed the Algonquin Round Table, and informal gathering of artistic peers where Parker was often the only woman. During the twenties, she lived a vivid life at the center of the party, drinking heavily and having extra-marital affairs; her work never suffered from her indulgences. Her best selling collection of poetry, Enough Rope, contained her dry and sardonic humor, including poetry on suicide and personal loss. In her prose, she relied heavily on dialogue to propel the story, much like her contemporary, Hemingway. In the 30s, Parker moved to Hollywood with her second husband and turned her hand at screenwriting, working on a number of films including A Star is Born; the craft, however, left her bored. With two other writers, she formed the Screen Writer’s Guild, her lasting contribution to the film industry. She later returned to New York, where she died alone. Parker left her estate to civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harold Pinter (b1930)
Harold Pinter is an English playwright who achieved international success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatists. Pinter’s dramas are noted for their use of silence and understatement to increase tension, and are thematically similar to Kafka: nameless menace, obsession and mental disturbance. His first major work, The Birthday Party, dealt in a Kafkaesque manner with an ordinary man threatened by strangers for an uknown reasons; the play closed in under a week after hostile reviews. Pinter was quoted decades later, “We don’t need critics to tell audiences what to think.” He went on to rapidly produce the body of work which made him the master of “the comedy of menace”. In The Homecoming, an estranged son brings his wife home to meet the male members of his family, he eventually leaves his wife behind to remain as mother/whore to the all-male household. Pinter has always been active in human rights issues, but has often been controversial, defending Slobodan Milosevic, and comparing Bush to Saddam Hussein, prior to the Iraq invasion. In the same year he won the Nobel Prize for literature, he abandoned his career as playwright to focus on politics, saying, “I’ve written 29 plays. Isn’t that enough?”

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)
Author and playwright, Luigi Pirandello, was the forerunner for the theater of the absurd, questioning the relationship between fiction and reality; accordingly much of his own work stems from his life. His wife, Antonietta Portulano suffered a mental breakdown, her illness and subsequent jealous paranoia was the basis for his first full length novel, L’Esclusa. The loss of his family’s business forced him to turn his writing into a profitable career, and turned his personal misfortune into his first literary success with Il Fu Mattia Pascal, where the antihero escapes from his ruinous life when believed to be dead and is offered a second chance to rebuild his life. Although Pirandello had always written plays, he did not concentrate on the theater until after 1915, when he began to question identity and what was real. It was with his revolutionary play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, that he broke through to the audience, creating an immediacy by forcing the audience to question the reality of what they were seeing. The play focuses on six fictional characters who claim to be from an unfinished dramatic work “truer” that the “real” characters of the play rehearsal they disrupt. With this play a new form a theater was born; Pirandello was subsequently awarded the Nobel prize for his contribution to theater in 1934.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Sylvia Plath's auto-biographical work resonates powerfully due to her self-shortened life, especially as her suicide came only months after the completion of her most identifiable work, The Bell Jar. Her novel documents the growing emotional distance and turmoil of a young woman, despite, and in rebellion to, her middle class environment. Equally talented and tragic, Plath lived most of her life isolating herself from her family, husband and children, while seeking to understand her own motivations through her writing, most of which was published posthumously. Her body of work has been studied to help understand Sylvia Plath and her fear of "suffocation" that she gradually succumbed to.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most original and prolific American writer, and is well known for his dark and melancholy fiction and poetry. His work was mainly self-published, including his first collection of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems, now one of the rarest volumes in American literary history. He began writing verse at the age of five and displayed a natural ability for it, stating in his preface to The Raven and Other Poems, "With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not-they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind." His most productive years were spent in Baltimore, where he worked at a series of magazines and was married to his 13 year old cousin, Virginia Clemm; she would be posthumously eulogized in the poem, "Annabel Lee". After her death, he lost his struggle with alcohol and drugs and entered a chronically depressed state which plagued him until his early death in 1849. Poe's work often reflected the paranoia and fear rooted in his psychology: depression, insanity, mental enfeeblement, the unseen, as well as untimely death. His actively morbid imagination made him the foremost American horror writer, the grandfather of murder mysteries, The Murders in the Rue Morgue setting the standard, and has inspired innumerable artists working in all media, including poets, authors, painters and screenwriters.

Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Although Ayn Rand enjoyed international acclaim for her work, Rand's ideas and life set her apart from her literary peers. A Russian expatriate, she fiercely rejected communism and developed her own sociological theory of Objectivism, which favors the individual over society, and reason above all else. According to her philosophy, personal sacrifice for society was irrational, for not only does it limit someone of intelligence by forcing them to deal with the needs of the public, it also curtails their development. This theory was worked into her fiction, first in The Fountainhead and later expanded in Atlas Shrugged. Both novels focused on geniuses who are constrained by society and the government when they tried to realize their vision. Rand wrote, "The genius must have his freedom and his independence." She lived up to her words in her life and her work.

Jean Rhys (1890-1979)
Jean Rhys lived most of her life in relative obscurity, publishing only a handful of short stories and novels during her tumultuous life. She traveled extensively, married often, and ended up far from her West Indies birthplace—living in poverty in England. She garnered international acclaim with the publication of her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, the literary prequel to Charlotte Brontë's, Jane Eyre. The novel recounts the life of Rochford's first wife, Antoinette, a Creole woman who follows her husband to England, only to fade in the never-ending gray of the "unreal" world. The character is reputedly based on her own background. All of Ryhs' work dealt with gender politics, where young women become dependant on more worldly men, and are victimized because of their naiveté. She was a gifted outsider; her lack of belonging embroidered her work with with an objective sense of self.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Rimbaud was one of the most influential poets of the late 19th century despite his youth—all of his work was penned before he was 20—the combination of his poetry and his rebellious life have inspired generations of artists. One of his most heralded works, "The Drunken Boat", is an intense warping of his senses relayed through spontaneous graphic verse infused with motion. His vagabond lifestyle with established poet, Paul Verlaine, was made more scandalous by their overtly sexual relationship, and enraged peers who considered him a "smutty homosexual terrorist". His life and work have inspired the symbolists, the surrealists, the Beat poets, artists and musicians of the counter-culture 60's, and a many others who live their art to the extreme.

Nelly Sachs (1891-1970)
Nelly Sachs was a German-born poet and dramatist who published the bulk of her work as a "mute outcry" against the Holocaust. In the 1920's she published her first collection of stories and poetry, and appeared in Berlin's newspapers and magazines. However, Sachs became a recluse when the Nazis seized power. She eventually fled to Sweden with her mother, escaping the fate of other family members who were sent to forced labor camps. Sachs lived in exile the remainder of her life. She taught herself Swedish and supported them both by translating Swedish poets into German. It was not until after her emigration, at the age of fifty, that Sachs became a poet of note. Her work focused on victims as part of an eternal metamorphosis, and her central motifs were flight and pursuit, hunter and quarry. Flucht Und Verwandlung (Flight and Metamorphosis) allowed her to expand her vision of human mentamorphosis and exile, and established her as a distinguished author. Sachs rarely let loose her rage, but transcended the tragedy of the Jewish people, conveying a message of reconciliation and resurrection. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966.

Anna Seghers (1900-1983)
Anna Seghers was a German author and essayist whose body of work dealt with the social injustices and political upheavals of the modern age. She cut ties with her bourgeois roots at an early age, believing as a writer she should advocate the cause of the proletariat, and that justice and humanistic culture could only be built on the grounds of socialism and communism. She became somewhat disillusioned in the party when German workers failed to stop the Nazi takeover of her native country. Her first novella, The Revolt of the Fishermen, dealt with the insurrection of Breton fishermen and began a theme that ran through her work; people must cooperate to fight oppression and rebellion gives meaning on one’s life, even in death. In her most famous work, The Seventh Cross, seven Germans escape a concentration camp and are pursued by the Gestapo, only one survives as a symbol of hope. Seghers had interviewed refuges to collect their firsthand experiences for the book. Hunted by the Gestpo in Paris, she was forced to destroy the original manuscript; luckily she had sent a copy to a colleague in the United States. Seghers has been criticized by feminists, as most of her female characters were subordinate to the male heroes, but she stood as a mother figure and inspiration for many female authors.

Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974)
Anne Sexton was raised in the comfort of middle class, though she never felt at ease with the life that was prescribed for her. She briefly wrote poetry in school, but it was not until her first nervous breakdown that she turned to it in earnest, at the recommendation of her therapist to help her manage her depression. Sexton began taking classes in poetry, and discovered a group of people who understood language, stating "I found I belong to the poets, that I was real there." Although she attempted to lead the life that was expected of her-getting married and having children-she continued to suffer from mental illness, turning to therapists, friends, and sexual affairs for support and affection. Many of her problems may have stemmed from genetics—her prized aunt suffered from a similar disposition—but she may have also been abused by her parents; she in turn sometimes abused her own children, continuing the cycle. Despite her problems, her "confessional" poetry quickly found an audience, though very little of it was autobiographical. She published a series of volumes, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Live or Die, but success brought no solace. In addition, her sudden fame brought increased marital discord as her husband became incensed over his celebrity wife. Sexton continued to distance herself from her family, and requested a divorce before launching on a self-destructive cycle of suicide attempts and alcoholism. She finally succeeded in taking her own life by carbon monoxide poisoning. Sexton's poetry echoed the fear and angst of her generation, and her act of "fictive creation" remains her legacy.

Mary Wollstoncraft Shelly (1797-1851)
Mary Shelly was born into a literary family; both her feminist mother, who died shortly after Mary's birth, and her political journalist father, had been published. Throughout her childhood Mary was allowed to educate herself among her father's intellectual circle, where she met Percy Shelly, whom she ran off with at the age of 16 and later married. They collaborated on the History of Six Weeks Tour of their adventures through Europe. The novel for which she is solely remembered, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, was written in response to a challenge from Lord Byron to write a ghost story. Mary Shelly claimed the story was inspired by a dream of the monster, though she may have been influenced by scientific experiments involving the "animation" of dead frogs by pulsing electricity through their nervous systems. The novel received mixed reviews, but was wildly successful with the public. However, due to Percy Shelly's foreword, many initially believed he was the author, not his nineteen year old bride. Mary eventually returned to England with her sole surviving child, Percy Florence, after the sequential deaths of her husband and other children. She refused to remarry and supported herself as a professional writer. Although she churned out a number of romantic novels and short stories, she never matched the success of Frankenstein. Mary Shelly withdrew from writing fiction when realism gained popularity.

Christina Stead (1902-1983)
Christina Stead has been called Australia's “lost” novelist, as she lived most of her life abroad and primarily published in the United States and England; her novel Letty Fox was banned in Australia due to her “depraved” heroine, and Stead would not be published in her own country until 1965. She grew up in New South Wales, went through a series of careers, and then followed a young lecturer, Keith Duncan, to London. This period would be the background in For Love Alone. She met and eventually married William Blake (neé Wilheim Blech). The Marxist couple moved frequently through Europe, stopping over in Hollywood where Stead turned her hand as a screenwriter with MGM, and then returned to Europe, where Blake died. During this time Stead continued to write, completing twelve novels before resettling in her native country in 1974. Her most memorable work was the ironic novel, The Man Who Loved Children, a portrait of the egotistical and tyrannical Sam Pollit, who was heavily based on Stead's own father. The novel's structure was influenced by her screen writing, as it is built around a series of dramatic scenes. The book was unrecognized for 25 years, when it was reissued with an influential preface by American poet, Randall Jarrell. With his assistance, Stead's work finally gained notoriety.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Gertrude Stein is most often remembered for the company she kept than for her own publications. Stein and her life partner, the demure Alice B. Toklas, entertained cubist painter, Picasso, impressionist Matisse, novelists Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the crème of intellectual society living in Paris prior to World War II. This meeting ground enabled artists from different backgrounds to share and develop new ideas; painting concepts bled into literature, music composition into painting, politics sprinkled into all. As a ringleader, Stein herself was an accomplished poet, essayist and dramatist, with an extensive body of work including The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is Stein's own life story. She was an exceptional modernist and her concepts in poetry and literary theory remain revolutionary. Though her work is savored by only a few dedicated readers, her contribution to one of the most robust artistic periods of modern times is immeasurable.

Wislawa Szymborska (b1923)
Polish poet and translator, Wislawa Szymborska, made her debut with the poem Szukam slowa, which was published in the Dziennik Polski. Her early work was constrained by the straightjacket of Socialist Realism, but she broke away from it as she, like many others, became disillusioned with the promises of Communism. Szymborska’s first collection of poetry was denied publication by the Communist party, who considered her work to be too complex and bourgeois. Her second collection Dlagtego Zyjemy (Why We Live) was distinctly political. Szymborska’s later work is more personal and relatively apolitical, though she noted that “apolitical poems are political, too”; it is also marked by a growing pessimism about the future of mankind. However, she believed in the power of words and the joy arising from imagination. She was quoted, “…inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally...Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know’”. Szymborska was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1996, and is one of the few female poets to receive this award.

Sony Labou Tansi (1947-1995)
Sony Labou Tansi was a Congolese novelist and poet, as well as a dramatist in the African avant-garde. He provocatively broke western literary traditions, swapped styles and points of view, and employed carnival-like exaggeration and hallucinatory scenes to satirize the corruption of power in his country; his work also spoke to the potential in resistance. Although his plays were acclaimed in Paris, Dakar and New York, his work was criticized in his own country for its "ideologically doubtful views". In the dramatic satire, La paranthèse de sang, a group of soldiers is sent to kill a rebel leader who is already dead; after interrogating and massacring the family, the government sends notice that they are no longer interested in the Libertashio. In 1979 Tansi founded the Rocardo Zulu Theatre and published his first novel, La Vie et demie, which won the Prix Spécial du Festival de la Francophonie. He was vocally opposed to the Congo's transition to a single political party system-his passport was revoked due to his involvement in tribal politics. Tansi and his wife suffered from AIDS, and they were unable to obtain medical assistance; they both died from AIDS-related illnesses in 1995.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Dylan Thomas was a poet and author with a distinctive voice. His work is marked by vivid metaphors, the celebration and wonder of growth and death, a musical quality in his use of language, and visual and sensual imagery. His father was an English grammar school teacher, where Thomas received his only formal education. Though his family adopted the English language and Thomas could not read Welsh, he took on the rhythms of his native tongue and used it to set the meter of his verse. He released several collections of poetry, but it was his last work, Under Milk Wood, which had become his most acclaimed. In it he returns to the Welsh landscape for inspiration, building a poetic play for voices in which Thomas was the narrator, revealing the lives of 53 individuals in a small town. The poet had a singular booming voice, which gained him notoriety on BBC radio programs. Despite his literary successes, his life and marriage were tumultuous, he was often just scraping by and even at the pinnacle of his career, weighed down by depression. His work is often overshadowed by his alcoholism, which has gained mythic proportions. Thomas' lyrical poetry and fiction is often quoted, has been set to music, and presented on stage and film.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec captured the uninhibited lifestyle of bohemian Paris in smoky oil paintings and vivid posters that have come to define the decadent romance of the Moulin Rouge. Influenced by Japanese artwork and the swirl of nightlife around him, Toulouse-Lautrec crafted a style that would lead into the cubist movement with the start of the 20th century. His perspective was strongly influenced by his stature, due to a genetic disorder and a childhood accident, Toulouse-Lautrec grew to be only 4 ½ feet tall. He was never fully accepted by the glamourous society he depicted, but his outsider status granted him the distance to observe and capture his subjects, which he did constantly. Sadly, his attempts of fitting in with this indulgent crowd led to alcoholism that ended his career, and shortly after, his life, at the age of 36.

Katri Vala (1901-1944)
Katri Vala, was one of the first Finnish poets to work in free verse. Her poetry reflected the tone of her life, with the dark body of poverty she inhabited, haloed by a rising optimism. She expressed her sympathy for the underprivileged, confessed her own weaknesses to rebellion, but refused to accept the prevailing world order. She was the leading critic in Tulenkantajat, publishing reviews under the pseudonym “Pecka”, where she attacked National Socialism, Fascism and the racial policies of the Third Reich. Her later work took on a darker tone, especially after the death of her first child, a daughter who lived only two hours; three of the poems written to deal with her loss were collected into Paluu. In the 1940’s her tuberculosis and dire financial position forced her to move to Sweden with her husband and son. Shortly after, her husband was arrested and her papers confiscated in a house search. In her final collection, Pesapuu Palaa, her poems are filled with visions of war and fears for the future of her child, but the feelings of hopelessness are buoyed by a hopefulness of change in waiting for spring to blossom. Vala died shortly after the publication in a sanatorium.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b 1922-2007)
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is at his best when he grafts the worlds of science fiction and politics together in unconventionally dark comedy. He frames his work in science fiction and skewers sociological precepts in such a casual manner that many readers overlook the depth and breadth of his novels in favor of the much lighter satire. Vonnegut stands alone as one of the few American writers who have cross-bred literary gen