Libba Bray

Libba Bray was born Martha B. Bray in 1964 in Alabama. She graduated from the University of Texas as a Theater major. After she finished her studies, she went to New York City where she had her fisrt job at Penguin Putnam in the publicity department. She was encouraged writing Young Adults stories by her husband, who is also a children's books agent. Before that, she had written three romance books, under a pen-name.

A great and terrible beauty is her first novel. She's friend with several young adults authors, like Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.

She's currently working on a comedy, Going Bovine, it the story of Cameron, a 16-year-old boy who has the mad cow disease.

"Libba Bray has never lived in the Victorian era, is not british, and she has no superpowers, though if she did, they would involve being able to eat her weight in Swedish fish without feeling the urgent need to shave her tongue afterward. She lives in Brroklyn, New York, with her husband, their son, and a cat of questionable intelligence. "

You can find her Autobiography here (and it's quite funny) or visit her website and blog

Bibliography

* Gemma Doyle : A great and terrible beauty (2003); Rebel angels (2005); The sweet far thing (2007)

* Going Bovine

Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare is a pen name used by the author of The Mortal Instruments trilogy. She was born in Teheran, from amrican parents. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was 10. Since she left highschool, she lived in Los Angeles and New York where she had different jobs for magazines and tabloids. She began working on City of bones in 2004, inspiring herself with Manhattan decorum.

Before publishing City of bones, Cassandra Clare became famous with fan-fictions undre the pen name Cassandra Claire. She wrote The Draco Trilogy (Harry Potter fan-fiction) and The Very Secret Diaries (Lord of the Ring fan-fiction).

You can find out more about Cassandra Clare on her official website, her blog, and her Myspace

Bibliography

The Mortal Instruments : City of bones (2007); City of ashes (2008); City of glass (2009)

The Infernal Devices : The clockwork angel (2010); The clockwork princess (2011); The clockwork prince (2012)

William Shakespeare

Biography

William Shakespeare was born in Warwickshire, England, on April 23rd, 1564. He came from a family, with a good place on the social ladder. He went to the secondary school Edward VI, where he learned Latin, rhetoric, logic and history. Yet, all this is only pure speculation, because there isn't any evidence of it. In 1582, he marries Anne Hathaway, older than him by 8 years, and already pregnant on the wedding day. The following years were called 'the lost years', because we can't find any trace of Shakespeare in the registers, except the birth of his children, and his only son who died very young. It's in 1592 that we find again Shakespeare on the Londonian stage, as an actor and playwright. Then he became a member of the company The Lord Chamberlain's Men, which would be later adopted by Jacques 1st, and would change name and become 'King's Men'. In-between, Shakespeare would play in Ben Jonson's plays, for example Every Man in his humor and Sejanus. He retired in 1611. He died in 1616, and was buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the choir of the church.

He composed himself his epitaph :

" Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones, And crvst be he yt moves my bones."

There is a rumour accordint to which some unpublished works would be buried with him, but no one has ever yet dared profane his tomb to verify. Every year, at the supposed date of his birth, a goose feather is placed in the right hand of the statue which represents him.

Bibliography

Tragedies : Romeo and Juliet; Macbeth; King Lear; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; Othello, the Moor of Venice; Titus Andronicus; Julius Caesar; Antony and Cleopatra; Cariolanus; Troilus and Cressida; Timon of Athens

Comedies : All's well that ends well; As you like it; A Midsummer night's dream; Much Ado about nothing; Measure for measure; The taming of the shrew; Twelfth Night; The Merchant of Venice; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Love's Labour's Lost; The two gentlement of Verona; The Comedy of Errors

Historical plays : Richard III; Richard II; Henry VI; Henry V; Henry IV; Henry VIII; King John; Edward III; Sir Thomas More

Romances : Pericles, Prince of Tyr; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; The Tempest; The two noble kinsmen

Poetry : The Sonnets; The long poems

For more information about Shakespeare and his work : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare

Kelley Armstrong

Kelley Armstrong was born in 1968, in Canada. After graduating in psychology, she switched to computer programming in Fanshawe College in order to have more time for writing. She published her first novel, Bitten, in 2001 and 6 others followed in the fantasy series Women of the Otherworld, as well as numerous short stories and novellas. She published her first crime novel in 2007, Exit Strategy.

She currently lives in Ontario with her husband and their 3 children, where she's working on a new fantasy series for Young Adults.

Bibliography

* Women of the Otherworld : Novels
Bitten (2001); Stolen (2002); Dime Store Magic (2004); Industrial Magic (2004); Haunted (2005); Broken (2006); No Humans Involved (2007); Personal Demon (2008); Living with the Dead (2008)

* Women of the Otherworld : short stories and novellas
Rebirth (2005); Infusion (2005); Savage (2003); Ascension (2003); Demonology (2005); Birthright (2005); Beginnings (2004); Becoming (2007); The Case of the Half-Demon Spy (2005); Expectations (2005); Truth and Consequences (1996); Territorial (2005); Ghosts (2005); Escape (2005); Wedding Bell Hell (2005); Adventurer (2005); Chaotic (2006); The Case of El Chupacabra (2006); Bargain (2005); Framed (2007); Twilight (2007); Stalked (2008)
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* Nadia Stafford
Exit Strategy (2007)

You can find Kelley Armstrong on her official website, and her short stories on line here

George Orwell

Biography

George Orwell, from his real nam Eric Arthur Blair, was born in 1903 in India, where his father was a clerk for the British Crown. He arrived in England in 1903 with his mother, but his father would only join them in 1911. He obtained a scholarship to study in Eton, the most prestigious school in the Kingdom, where he'd stay until 1921. After all those years of study when he was a mediocre student, he became sergeant in the imperial police forces in Birmania. He came back in 1927 and declared himself enemy of the British Imperialism. He then became a revolutionary, and went to Spain during the war. When he came back in england, he hoped for a closing between noble and proletarian classes and wrote Homage to Catalonia to establish the truth about what the left-intellectuals said. En 1944, he finished Animal Farm which would be refused by several publishers before finally being published. Toward the end of the war, he wrote 1984, a parody of a totalitarian state. He died in 1950 of tuberculosis, in London. He was buried in Sutton Courtenay, in Oxfordshire.

Bibliography

Novels : Burmese Days (1934); A Clergyman's Daughter (1935); Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936); Coming Up for Air (1939); Animal Farm (1945); Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Books based on personal experiences : Down and out in London and Paris (1933); The Road to Wigan Pier (1937); Homage to Catalonia (1938)

He also wrote several essays and some poetry

Holly Black

Biography

Holly Black was born in 1971 in New-Jersey. She graduated with a B.A. in English from The College of New Jersey in 1994. Then she worked as a publisher for medical magazines and followed a cursus in Library Sciences at the Rutgers University.
She published her first novel in 2002, Tithe : A Modern Faerie Tale, which was one of the Best Book for Young Adults according to The American Library Association. Holly Black wrote two sequels : Valiant and Ironside.

She collaborated with a long-time friend, Tony DiTerlizzi for the writing of the series The Spiderwick Chronicles, begun in 2003.This series has rapidly become a best-seller, translated in 32 languages. There are already 6 Spiderwick published and another one is on its way.
The first volume was adapted for the cinema in 2007, with Freddie Highmore and Sarah Bolger.
Holly Black is currently working on a series of graphic novels with Ted Naifeh and on a new novel, The White Cat.
She lives in Massachussetts with her husband and her library is still growing...

You can find more about Holly Black on her official website

Bibliography

Novels
* The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi)
The Field Guide (2003); The Seeing Stone (2003); Lucinda's Secret (2003); The Ironwood Tree (2004); The Wrath of Mulgarth (2004); Arthur Spiderwick's Notebook of Fantastical Observations (2005); Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You (2005); Care and Feeding of Sprites (2006); The Nixie's Song : Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles (2007); A Giant Problem (2008)
* A Modern Faerie Tale
Tithe (2002); Valiant (2005); Ironside (2007)
* The White Cat (2010)

Graphic Novels
* The Good Neighbors ( with Ted Naifeh)
Kin (2008); Kith (2009); Kind (2010)

Short Stories
Hades and Persephone (1997); The Night Market (2004); Heartless (2005); Going Ironside (2007); In Vodka Veritas (2007); 21 proms : Reversal of Fortune (2007); The Poison Eaters (2007); Paper Cuts Scissors (2007); The Coat of Stars (2007); Virgin (2008)

Poetry
The Third Third : Israfel's tale (1996); Bone Mother (2004)

L. Frank Baum

Biography

Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856, in new York. He was an author, actor and play director.
He was from a rich oil family.
He began writing very early, first with a paper he wrote with his brother.
At 17, he began to be instered in theater, but he was financially abused several times. So he occupied various jobs, while continuing in the theater field in-between.
In 1880, his father builds a theater and he then began to write plays and gathered a company.
In 1888, Baum and his wife moved to Dakota, where he opened a shop, Baum's Bazaar, but he would be soon led to bankruptcy. Dakota inspired him for the description of Dorothy's Kansas in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
After this, he tried himself to journalism and work for the local paper.
After the bankruptcy of the newspaper, in 1897, he published Mother Goose in Prose, which will have a little success but it allowed him to stop working and to dedicate himself to writing.
Dorothy was born in 1900 under Baum's feather and with the illustrations of W.W. Denslow.
The book had stayed best-seller for children for 2 years after it was published. With this success, Baum went on writing the adventures of the country of Oz, with 13 sequels.
He also wrote numerous books and short stories outside Oz, and under several pen-names : Edith Van Dyne, Floyd Akers, Schuyler Staunton, John Estes Cooke, Suzanne Metcalf, Laura Bancroft.

L. Frank Baum died in 1919, and was buried in the Forrest Lawn Memory Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Note : Baum hated his first name, and prefer to be called by his middle name, Frank, hence L. Frank Baum

If you want to know more about L. Frank Baum and his work, I invite you to read this complete article

Bibliography from Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)
Ozma of Oz (1907)
Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz (1908)
The Road to Oz (1909)
The Emerald City of Oz (1910)
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)
Tik-Tok of Oz (1914)
The Scarecrow of Oz (1915)
Rinkitink in Oz (1916)
The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
The Tin-Woodman of Oz (1918)
The Magic of Oz (1919 = posthume)
Glinda of Oz (1920 = posthume)
Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (1905)
The Waggle-Bug Book (1905)
Little Wizard Stories of Oz (1913)

For a complete bibliography

Alice Kuipers

Biography

Alice Kuipers was born in London in 1979. Today she lives in Saskatoon, Canada where she's a Pilates teacher.
She studied at manchester and Manchester Metropolitan Universities. She also worked as a producer for the CBC Radio. She published several short stories in literary magazines : The Wife and the Waitress in Parenthesis. Life on the Refrigerator Door is her debut novel ans was nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2008 and the rights have already been bought by 40 countries.

Bibliography

Life on the Refrigerator Door (2007)

You can find more on Alice Kuipers's official site

Koushun Takami

"Koushun Takami was born in 1969 in Amagasi near Osaka and grew up in Kagawa Prefecture of Shikoku, where he currently resides. After graduating from Osaka University with a degree in literature, he dropped out of Nihon University's liberal arts correspondence-course program. From 1991 to 1996 he worked for the prefectural news company Shikoku Shinbun, reporting on various fields, including politics, police reports, and economics. Although he has an English teaching certificate, he has yet to visit the United States.

Battle Royale, completed after Takami left the news company, was rejected in the final round of a literary competition sponsored by a major publisher due to the critical controversy it provoked among the jury members. With its publication in Japan in 1999, though, Battle Royale received widespread support, particularly from young readers, and became a bestseller. In 2000, Battle Royale was serialized as a comic and made into a feature film.

Mr. Takami is currently working on his second novel."

Stephen King

Biography

Stephen King was born in 1947, in Portland, Maine. He has been a great reader of comics since he was a teenage, especially The Tales of the Crypt, hence his taste for the horror genre. He began writing at school where he used to sell his stories to his classmates. Then he started working on his first novel in 1965, but has never finished it. He went to Maine University where he studied literature, and where he met Tabitha Jane Spruce who would become his wife and the mother of his 3 children.
He wrote The Long Walk, his first novel, in 1967, but his first novels wouldn't be published before the 1980's, after Carrie. Since then, he has written best-seller after best-seller, a lot of his books were adapted into films, and he has become for many people the undisputed master of the horror genre. He also wrote books under the pen name Richard Bachman.

You can find more about Stephen King and his books on his official website

Bibliography

Under the name Stephen King
Novels : Carrie (1974); 'Salem's Lot (1975); The Shining (1977); The Stand (1978); The Dead Zone (1979); Firestarter (1980); Cujo (1981); Aastha (1981); Christine (1983); Cycle of the Werewolf (1983); Pet Sematary (1983); The Eyes of the Dragon (1984); The Talisman (1984 with peter Straub); It (1986); Misery (1987); The Tommyknockers (1988); The Drak Half (1989); Mr Pretty Pany (1989); Neddful Things (1991); Gerald's Game (1992); Dolores Claiborne (1993); Insomnia (1994); Rose Madder (1995); Umney's Last Case (1995); The Green Mile (1996); Desperation (1996); Bag of Bones (1998); Storm of the Century (1999); The Girl who loved Tom Gordon (1999); The New Lieutenant's Rap (1999); Hearts in Atlantis (1999); Secret Window (2000); Dreamcatcher (2001); Black House (2001 with Peter Straub); From a Buick 8 (2003); The Colorado Kid (2005); Cell (2006); Lisey's Story (2007); Duma Key (2008)

Short Stories : Night Shift (1978); Different Seasons (1982); Skeleton Crew (1985); Four Past Midnight (1990); Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993); Six Stories (1997); Everything's Eventual : 14 Dark Tales (2002)

The Dark Tower : The Gunslinger (1982); The Drawing of Three (1987); The Waste Lands (1991); Wizard and Glass (1997); Wolves of the Calla (2003); Song of Susannah (2004); The Dark Tower (2005)

Non Fiction : On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft (2000)

Comics : Creepshow (1982); The Dark Tower (2007)

Audio Book : Blood and Smoke (1999)

On Line Book : The Plant (2000)

Under the name Richard Bachman
Novels : Rage (1977); The Long Walk (1979); Roadwork (1981); The Running Man (1982); Thinner (1984); The Regulators (1996); Blaze (2007)

Films
Carrie (1976); The Shining (1980); Creepshow (1982); Cujo (1983); Dead Zone (1983); Christine (1983); Children of the Corn (1984); Firestarter (1984); Cat's Eye (1985); Silver Bullet (1985); Maximum Overdirve (1986); Stand By me (1986); Creepshow 2 (1987); The Running man (1987); Pet Sematary (1989); Tales from the Darkside : The Movie (1990); Graveyard Shift (1990); Misery (1990); Sleepwalkers (1992); Needful Things (1993); The Dark Half (1993); The shawshank Redemption (1994); Dolores Claiborne (1995); The Mangler (1995); Thinner (1996); The Night Flier (1997); Apt Pupil (1998); The Green Mile (1999); Hearts in Atlantis (2001); Dreamcatcher (2003); Secret Window (2004); Riding the Bullet (2005); Room 1408 (2007); The Mist (2007)

Series

'Salem's Lot (1979); The Word Processor of the Gods (1985); Gramma (1986); Sorry, Right Number (1987); Sometimes they come back (1990); It (1990); The Moving Finger (1992); The Tommyknockers (1992); The Stand (1994); The Langoliers (1995); The Shining (1997); Chinga (1997); Trucks (1997); Chattery Teeth (1998); Storm of the Century (1999); Firestarter 2 : The Revenge (2001); Rose Red (2002); Carrie (2002); Dead Zone (2002); Kingdom Hospital (2004); Salem (2004); Desperation (2006); Nightmares and Dreamscapes (2006)

Scott Westerfeld

Biography

Scott Westerfeld was born in 1963 in Texas. According to The New-York Times he is one of the best-selling authors of science-fiction and young adults literature. He's already won several prizes for his novels, and Uglies and Peeps were named by the American Library Association as Best Books for Young Adults in 2006. Two of his novels, So Yesterday and Uglies have been optioned to be made into films. Currently Scott Westerfeld shares his time between Sydney and New-York with his wife, Justine Larbalestier who is also an author for young adults.

You can find more about Scott Westerfeld and his books on his website and his blog.

Bibliography

Novels Polymorph (1997); Fine Prey (1998), Evolution's Darling (2000); So Yesterday (2004); Leviathan (2008)
Vampires : Peeps / Parasite Positives (2005); The Last Days (2006)
Successions : The Risen Empire (2003); The Killings of Worlds (2003)
Midnighters : The Secret Hour (2004); Touching Darkness (2005); Blue Noon (2006)
Uglies : Uglies (2004); Pretties (2005); Specials (2006); Extras (2007)

Meg Rosoff

Biography

Meg Rosoff was born in 1956 in Boston. She studied in Harvard University, after being refused to Princeton University. After three years, she decides to enter St Martin's College Art in London. There she was unseccessful and returns to Harvard and graduates. After that she went to New York where she stayed for 10 years, working in publishing and advertising. After these 10 years, she decides to give a second chance to London, and she still lives there. After spending 15 years in advertising business, she begins writing after her sister's death. A first Young Adults novel was published in 2004, How I live Now, and received several prizes.

You can find more abour Meg Rosoff on her website.

Bibliography

Young Adults novels
How I Live Now : 2004
Just In Case : 2006
What I Was : 2007

Children's books
Meet Wild Boars : 2005
Jumpy Jack and Googily : 2008

Non Fiction
London Guide : Your passport to great travel