The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Literature,
#1251
Priscilla Wald
#75768
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Priscilla Wald is Professor of English and Women's Studies at Duke University and the author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form and Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative . She has published widely on the intersections of science, medicine, law, and literature. She is currently at work on a book-length study entitled Human Being After Genocide, which chronicles the challenge to conceptions of human being that emerged from scientific and technological innovation in the wake of the Second World War, as well as a series of essays that explore th...
Go to Profile#1252
Fanny Rubio
#89755
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Francisca Rubio Gámez , better known by the pseudonym Fanny Rubio, is a Spanish professor, researcher, and writer, an expert in contemporary Spanish poetry. Biography Born in Linares on 18 October 1949, Fanny Rubio began her university studies in Granada, then graduated in Hispanic Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1971. She earned a PhD in Romance Philology from the University of Granada in December 1975, with a doctoral thesis about poetry magazines in Francoist Spain. Linked to the University of Granada since 1971 as a research fellow, she went to Fez, Morocco with her husband, Bernabé López García, a specialist in Arab History and Culture, in 1974.
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Quiara Alegría Hudes
#64120
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Quiara Alegría Hudes is an American playwright, producer, lyricist and essayist. She is best known for writing the book for the musical In the Heights , and screenplay for its film adaptation. Hudes' first play in her Elliot Trilogy, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Water by the Spoonful, her second play in that trilogy.
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Barbara Clare Foley
#79370
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Barbara Foley is an American writer and the Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark. She focuses her research and teaching on U.S. literary radicalism, African American literature, and Marxist criticism. The author of six books and over seventy scholarly articles, review essays, and book chapters, she has published on literary theory, academic politics, US proletarian literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the writers Ralph Ellison and Jean Toomer. Throughout her career, her work has emphasized the centrality of antiracism and Marxist class analysis to both literary s...
Go to Profile#1255
Wendy Murray
#62671
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Wendy Murray is a prolific writer best known for her books about religion. Wendy Murray grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio , majoring in religion and graduating magna cum laude. She also received membership in Hiram’s Phi Beta Kappa society. She completed a master's degree in theological studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, S. Hamilton, Massachusetts, graduating magna cum laude in 1985.
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Kass Fleisher
#92880
Overall Influence
1959 - 2023 (64 years)
Helen Kassia Fleisher was an American writer best known for her fiction and creative nonfiction. Biography Fleisher earned degrees in English from Dickinson College , the University of North Dakota , and Binghamton University . Fleisher was the author of five books and numerous essays and reviews, and the editor, with Caitlin M. Alvarez, of a literary anthology. With her frequent writing partner, Joe Amato, Fleisher wrote several screenplays . From 2003 to 2023, Fleisher was a member of the creative writing faculty at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. She founded Steerage Press ...
Go to Profile#1257
Julia Jarcho
#60577
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Julia Jarcho is an American experimental playwright and director and professor of theater and performance studies. The NYC company Minor Theater produces and debuts her new works. She won the 2013 Obie for Best New American Play for Grimly Handsome. Chief theater critic for The New York Times Ben Brantley has called her "a queen of experimental mayhem". Jarcho is an Associate Professor and Head the MFA Playwriting Program at Brown University.
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Una Chi
#100139
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
Una Chi was an Italian translator and writer. Life Bruna Bianchi was born in Milan in 1942. For many years she was a professor of German literature at the University of Milan. She translated into Italian several German literature masterpieces, including Günter Grass' From the Diary of a Snail ; Max von der Grün's Stellenweise Glatteis ; Max Frisch's Bluebeard ; and Martin Walser's Das Einhorn . She also translated works by Goethe and Thomas Mann.
Go to Profile#1259
Loree Rackstraw
#67744
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Loree Rackstraw was an American literary critic and memoirist. She taught English at the University of Northern Iowa from 1966 to 1996, and she was the author of Love As Always, Kurt: Vonnegut As I Knew Him .
Go to Profile#1260
Samantha George
#68875
Overall Influence
Dr Samantha George is a Senior Lecturer in Literature in the Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities Research Institute at the University of Hertfordshire. She completed a PhD at the University of York in 2004, then taught in the Department of English Literature at Sheffield University till taking up her post at Hertfordshire in 2007. She is known for her research on eighteenth century literature and science with a particular emphasis on the role of women and botany.
Go to Profile#1261
Susan Johnson
#97649
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Susan Johnson is an Australian author of literary fiction, memoir, short stories and essays. She has been a full-time writer since 1985, with occasional stints of journalism at Australian newspapers, journals and magazines.
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Miriam Waddington
#62995
Overall Influence
1917 - 2004 (87 years)
Miriam Waddington was a Canadian poet, short story writer and translator. She was part of a Montreal literary circle that included F. R. Scott, Irving Layton and Louis Dudek. Biography Miriam Waddington was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she studied English at the University of Toronto and social work at the University of Pennsylvania . She worked for many years as a social worker in Montreal, Quebec. She later relocated to the then Toronto suburb of North York, where she worked for North York Family Services. In 1964, she joined the English department at York University. She retired in 1983.
Go to Profile#1263
Joan Blos
#74047
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Joan Winsor Blos was an American writer, teacher and advocate for children's literacy. For her 1979 historical novel, A Gathering of Days, Blos won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Books and the Newbery Medal for the year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature.
Go to Profile#1264
Cecil Dawkins
#91975
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Cecil Dawkins was an American author who wrote primarily fiction. Early life Dawkins was born October 2, 1927, in Birmingham, Alabama, where she grew to adulthood. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a B.A. in English in 1950, where she was a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha women's fraternity. She then studied at Stanford University, where she earned her M.A. degree in English literature in 1953. Her second year at Stanford she was awarded the Stanford University Creative Writing Fellowship, , 1952–1953.
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Laleh Khadivi
#84799
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Laleh Khadivi is an Iranian American novelist, and filmmaker. Life Khadivi was born to a Kurdish family in Esfahan, Iran, in 1977. Shortly after the Iranian Revolution, she emigrated to the United States with her family in 1979, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from Reed College and from Mills College with an MFA. In 2002 she began to research the Kurds, particularly their fate in the southwestern region of Iran under the first Shah. Her first novel, The Age of Orphans, is the story of a Kurdish boy whose father is killed in a battle with the Iranian army in 1921. The boy...
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Kathleen Mary Tillotson
#87499
Overall Influence
1906 - 2001 (95 years)
Kathleen Mary Tillotson CBE was a British academic and literary critic, professor of English and distinguished Victorian scholar. Her various works on Elizabethan literature have accumulated significance in the literary sphere, conducting important research and producing publications that feature her editorship. Her work has encouraged many to become involved with literary research.
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Rita K. Gollin
#68101
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Rita Kaplan Gollin was a professor of English and a scholar of American literature. Life and career Rita Gollin was born Rita Kaplan on January 22, 1928, in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated magna cum laude from Queens College with a B.A. in English in 1949, and received her M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota in 1950. She earned her doctorate in English from the same university in 1961 under Professor C. H. Foster.
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Marina Perezagua
#106498
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Marina Perezagua is a novelist and writer in Spanish. Life Perezagua was born in Seville, Spain. She graduated in Art History from the University of Seville and the Universitá Degli Studi di Padova. She obtained her PhD in philology in the United States and later on she became a professor of language, literature, history and Latin American cinema at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Afterwards she worked for two years at the Instituto Cervantes de Lyon. She has three masters degrees and one doctorate.
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Marion May Campbell
#90062
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Marion May Campbell is a contemporary Australian novelist and an academician. Biography Marion May Campbell was born in Sydney, New South Wales, 1948. Campbell earned a BA in French Literature studying first at the University of New South Wales and completing her degree at the University of Western Australia. She then pursued her post-graduate study at Aix en Provence, writing a dissertation on the work of Stéphane Mallarmé and completed a PhD in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2011.
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Sue-Ellen Case
#68613
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Sue-Ellen Case is Professor and Chair of Critical Studies in the Theatre Department in the School of Theater Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published several books, including Feminism and Theatre and The Domain-Matrix: Performing Lesbian at the End of Print Culture. Case has also edited several anthologies of critical works and play texts, including The Divided Home/Land: Contemporary German Women's Plays; Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance, which won the 1996 Lambda Literary Award for Drama; Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, and many others.
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Lulu Wang
#76835
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Lulu Wang is a Chinese-born writer who has lived in the Netherlands since 1986. She is a best-selling novelist and also a columnist for Shijie Bolan . Early life Lulu Wang was born on 22 December 1960 in Beijing, China. Her mother was a teacher of literature. At Peking University, Wang studied subjects including English language and literature. After graduation, she taught at the university before moving to the Netherlands in 1986, at the age of 26; there she taught Chinese at the Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in Maastricht.
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Ruxandra Cesereanu
#85841
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Ruxandra-Mihaela Cesereanu or Ruxandra-Mihaela Braga is a Romanian poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and literary critic. Also known as a journalist, academic, literary historian and film critic, Cesereanu holds a teaching position at the Babeș-Bolyai University , and is an editor for the magazine Steaua in Cluj-Napoca.
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Kathryn Davis
#39732
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Kathryn Davis is an American novelist. She is a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award. Life Davis has taught at Skidmore College, and is now senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
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Ping Lu
#50541
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Lu Ping , born in Kaohsiung in 1953, is a Taiwanese writer who writes under the pen name “Ping Lu”. Her writing encompasses a broad range of genres, including novels, essays, poems, commentary, and theater plays. She is also known in the Chinese-language world for her critique of social phenomenon, ranging from cultural development to gender issues and human rights. Over the past two decades, Ms. Lu has successfully established herself as a prominent novelist, columnist, and commentator in Taiwan.
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Josefina Ludmer
#126482
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Josefina Ludmer was an Argentinean professor, essayist, writer, and literary critic. She was a professor at the University of Buenos Aires and later at Yale University , specializing in Latin American literature.
Go to Profile#1276
Biancamaria Frabotta
#65732
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Biancamaria Frabotta was an Italian writer. She promoted the study of women writers in Italy and her early poetry focused on feminist issues. The main themes of her later works are melancholy, the dichotomy between Nature and History and between Action and Contemplation, the relationship between the body and the self, and conjugal love. Besides essays on feminism and academic works on poets such as Giorgio Caproni, Franco Fortini, and Amelia Rosselli, she wrote plays, radio-dramas, a television show on Petrarch, and a novel. Until her retirement in 2016, she taught Modern Italian Literature...
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Lesley Lokko
#43890
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Lesley Naa Norle Lokko is a Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist. From 2019 to 2020 she was a professor and served as Dean of Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, in addition to holding teaching positions and different careers in Johannesburg, London, Accra and Edinburgh.
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Carmen Tafolla
#78809
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Carmen Tafolla is an internationally acclaimed Chicana writer from San Antonio, Texas, and a professor emerita of bicultural bilingual studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Tafolla served as the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2012 to 2014, and was named the Poet Laureate of Texas for 2015–16. Tafolla has written more than thirty books, and won multiple literary awards. She is one of the most highly anthologized Chicana authors in the United States, with her work appearing in more than 300 anthologies.
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Susan J. Douglas
#28177
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Susan J. Douglas is an American feminist columnist, and cultural critic who writes about gender issues, media criticism and American politics. She has published five books on American history, and is currently Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
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Patricia Edgar
#41105
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Patricia May Edgar AM is an Australian author, television producer, educator and media scholar best known as the founding director of the Australian Children's Television Foundation. Biography Early life Edgar was born in Mildura, Victoria, and moved to California in the 1960s with her husband, author and social researcher Dr. Don Edgar
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Susie Bright
#55538
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Susannah Bright is an American feminist, author and journalist, often on the subject of politics and sexuality. She is the recipient of the 2017 Humanist Feminist Award, and is one of the early writers/activists referred to as a sex-positive feminist. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library along with the archives of On Our Backs.
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Susan Palwick
#55639
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Susan Palwick is an American writer and associate professor emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. She began her professional career by publishing "The Woman Who Saved the World" for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1985.
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Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
#68506
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is an American novelist, short story writer and journalist whose fiction and literary non-fiction includes the recent novel Burning Distance, upcoming novel The Far Side of the Desert, regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River, the short story collection No Marble Angels, and PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line. She’s also the senior editor of The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. She is a Vice President of PEN International and has served as the International Secretary of PEN International and Chair of PEN International's Writer...
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Saveria Chemotti
#101438
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Saveria Chemotti is an Italian writer of non-fiction and prose. She is an essayist, novelist, and literary critic, as well as a researcher with a focus area of culture and gender studies. Biography Saveria Chemotti was born Madruzzo, Trentino, April 5, 1947. She earned a degree in literary subjects in 1972 .
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Miriam T. Griffin
#72213
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Miriam Tamara Griffin was an American classical scholar and tutor of ancient history at Somerville College at the University of Oxford from 1967 to 2002. She was a scholar of Roman history and ancient thought, and wrote books on the Emperor Nero and his tutor, Seneca, encouraging an appreciation of the philosophical writings of the ancient Romans within their historical context.
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Christine Craig
#86191
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Christine Craig is a Jamaican writer living in Florida, United States. She has published collections of poetry and short stories, as well as children's fiction and several non-fiction works. Biography Christine Craig was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up in rural Saint Elizabeth. She received a BA from the University of the West Indies. In 1970, she published her first work, Emanuel and His Parrot, a children's book. She began publishing poetry in the late 1970s and published her first poetry collection, Quadrille for Tigers, in 1984. In 1993, Craig published a collection of short stories entitled Mint Tea.
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Susan Shreve
#59248
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Susan Shreve is an American novelist, memoirist, and children's book author. She has published fifteen novels, most recently More News Tomorrow , and a memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood . She has also published thirty books for children, most recently The Lovely Shoes , and edited or co-edited five anthologies. Shreve co-founded the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at George Mason University in 1980, where she teaches fiction writing. She is the co-founder and the former chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She lives in Washington, D.C.
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Hanne Marie Svendsen
#100774
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Hanne Marie Svendsen is a Danish writer and former broadcasting executive. She has written works on Danish literature, plays and novels, including the award-winning Guldkuglen , published in English as The Gold Ball in 1989.
Go to Profile#1289
Jane Bernstein
#93342
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jane Bernstein is an American writer and novelist. Biography Born in Brooklyn, Bernstein received her Bachelor of Arts at New York University and her Master of Fine Arts at Columbia University. She is a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where she has taught since 1991.
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Nadia Chafik
#81051
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Nadia Chafik is a Moroccan novelist. Biography Nadia Chafik was born in Casablanca in 1962, and grew up in Rabat. She is from the Ait Sadden tribe, a Middle Atlas Berber tribe. Chafik studied at Montreal University and she taught in the same university during two years. Her principal academic works are: "Être romancière au Maghreb" and Une autre lecture du Maghreb à travers l'art scriptural et pictural français du 19e siècle .
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Suzanne Chazin
#92405
Overall Influence
Suzanne Chazin is an American author best known for the Georgia Skeehan mystery series, published by Putnam, about a New York City female firefighter-turned-fire marshal and for the Jimmy Vega mystery fiction series about a homicide detective navigating the world of the undocumented, published by Kensington Books.
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Rakhshanda Jalil
#125124
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Rakhshanda Jalil is an Indian writer, critic and literary historian. She is known for her book on Delhi's lesser-known monuments called Invisible City: The hidden Monuments of India and a well-received collection of short stories, called Release & Other Stories . Her PhD on the Progressive Writers' Movement as Reflected in Urdu Literature has been published by Oxford University Press as Liking Progress, Loving Change . Jalil runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture.
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Gillian Conoley
#71667
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Gillian Conoley is an American poet. Conoley serves as a professor and poet-in-residence at Sonoma State University. Conoley is author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has been anthologized in Norton’s American Hybrid, Counterpath’s Postmodern Lyricisms, Mondadori’s Nuova Poesia Americana , and Best American Poetry. Conoley's poetry has appeared in Conjunctions, New American Writing, American Poetry Review, The Canary, A Public Space, Carnet de Rouge, Jacket, Or, Fence, Verse, Ironwood, jubilat, Zyzzyva, Ploughshares, the Denver Quarterly, the Missouri Review and other publications. She is the recipient of the Jerome J.
Go to Profile#1294
Erin Elizabeth Smith
#119023
Overall Influence
Erin Elizabeth Smith is an American poet, editor, publisher, and educator. Biography Smith, originally from Lexington, South Carolina, holds a B.A. in English from Binghamton University, an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi. She currently teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections as well as a chapbook. Smith lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she serves as the Executive Director of the Sundress Acade...
Go to Profile#1295
Johanna Hanink
#85295
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Johanna Hanink is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University. She specialises in ancient Greek theater and performance and the cultural life and afterlife of ancient Athens. Hanink also serves as a contributor to Aeon Magazine, the Chronicle for Higher Education, and Eidolon.
Go to Profile#1296
Seo Yeong-eun
#112694
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Seo Yeong-eun is a South Korean writer. Life Born in Gangneung, Gangwon-do, Seo graduated from Gangneung Teacher Training School in 1961 and entered Konkuk University in 1963 to study English Language and Literature. However she left the university in 1965. In 1968, her short story, "Bridge" was accepted for publication by World of Thoughts and the following year, "I and 'I'" was published in Monthly Literature . She also worked as an editor for Literature and Thought and reported for Korean Literature , under the editorship of Lee Mungu. In 1983, she published a novella, The Distant Othe...
Go to Profile#1297
Shariann Lewitt
#105474
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Shariann Lewitt is an American author, specializing in science fiction. She is currently a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Publications First and Final Rites White Wing with Susan Shwartz Angel at Apogee Blind Justice Cybernetic Jungle Songs of Chaos Memento Mori Interface Masque Rebel Sutra
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Nadezhda Pavlova
#109732
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Nadezhda Vasilyevna Pavlova is a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer. People's Artist of the USSR . Life and artistic output Nadia Pavlova liked to dance from an early age. At 7 she began to dance with a group at the House of Pioneers.
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Rebecca Futo Kennedy
#77249
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Rebecca Futo Kennedy is Associate Professor of Classics, Women's and Gender Studies, and Environmental Studies at Denison University, and the Director of the Denison Museum. Her research focuses on the political, social, and cultural history of Classical Athens, Athenian tragedy, ancient immigration, ancient theories of race and ethnicity, and the reception of those theories in modern race science.
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Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir
#122184
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir was an Icelandic writer who was born in Reykjavík on 18 March 1938. After high school, she went to Spain and later worked on her doctoral thesis at Lausanne, Switzerland. She has written seven acclaimed novels in Iceland.
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