Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#3351

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

#79495

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is an American poet. Life Maria Mazziotti Gillan was born March 12, 1940, in an Italian enclave in Paterson, New Jersey's Riverside neighborhood. She attended Paterson public schools and is a graduate of Eastside High School.

#3352

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

#19129

Overall Influence

1942 - 2007 (65 years)

Michael James Jackson was an English writer and journalist. He was the author of many influential books about beer and whisky. He was a regular contributor to a number of broadsheets, particularly The Independent and The Observer.

#3353

Kerry Shawn Keys

#80430

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Kerry Shawn Keys is an American poet, writer, playwright and translator. He is a citizen of the United States and Lithuania. Roots and early life Keys was born 25 June 1946 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. His father worked as a plumber and sold kitchen supplies. His mother was of mixed English, Scottish and Irish ancestry, and was a housewife and clerk typist. Athletics and music were an important part of the household. As a child, Keys spent a good deal of time fishing and hunting with his father, and tramping the mountains around their family hunting cabin near Pine Grove Furnace State Park and Fuller Lake.

#3354

Evie Shockley

#66430

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Evie Shockley is an American poet. Shockley received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry for her book the new black and the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018.

#3355

Marcus Gardley

#42025

Overall Influence

Marcus Gardley is an American poet, playwright and screenwriter from West Oakland, California. He is an ensemble member playwright at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago and an assistant professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Brown University.

#3356

Hatif Janabi

#83331

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Hatif Janabi is an Iraqi poet, translator and author. Born near Babylon in 1952, he studied Arabic language and literature at Baghdad University. He moved to Warsaw, Poland in 1976 for higher studies, eventually obtaining a master's degree in Polish language and literature and a PhD in drama, both from Warsaw University. He has lived in Poland ever since and now teaches Arabic language and literature at Warsaw University. He has also taught at the University of Tizi Ouzou and Indiana University.

#3357

Michael Winterbottom

#66329

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Michael Winterbottom, is an English classical scholar and author, who was Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1992 to 2001. Biography Michael Winterbottom was educated at Dulwich College, London, and Pembroke College, Oxford. During the Second World War, his family moved from Sale to Torquay, then to Walsall before settling in London.

#3358

Esmaeel Azar

#55009

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Esmaeel Azar or Amir Esmaeel Azar is a professor of Persian literature and director of the Department of Persian Language at the Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, and director of the Farhangban Cultural and Artistic Institute. He also works as a presenter on literary programs on Iranian television, including the "Watching the Oath and the Beginning of the Word" . He is a member of the Art commission at the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, Director of the Persian Literature Department at the Economic Cooperation Organization, Member of the Naming Committe...

#3359

Gerard Woodward

#54160

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Gerard Woodward is a British novelist, poet and short story writer, best known for his trilogy of novels concerning the troubled Jones family, the second of which, I'll Go to Bed at Noon, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize.

#3360

Nicoletta Vallorani

#84649

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Nicoletta Vallorani is an Italian science fiction writer. Born in Offida, in the Marche region, she holds a degree in Foreign Languages with a dissertation on Contemporary American Literature, honed her writing skills as a translator and currently teaches English Language and Literature in the University of Milan, Milan.

#3361

Kate Zambreno

#83732

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Kate Zambreno is an American novelist, essayist, critic, and professor. She teaches writing in the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and at Sarah Lawrence College. Zambreno is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction.

#3362

Aida Bamia

#81583

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Aida Adib Bamia is professor emeritus of Arabic language and literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is a specialist in North African literature. Her work on Arabic literature has helped to bring quality translations to English readers.

#3363

Gabriel Gudding

#62783

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Gabriel Gudding is an American poet, essayist, and translator. Life Gudding attended The Evergreen State College, an experimental school in Olympia, Washington, Purdue University and Cornell University. He is Professor of English in the English Studies Department at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois where he was hired to teach experimental poetry writing and poetics. His work has been translated into French, Danish, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Spanish.

#3364

Zsuzsanna Gahse

#108376

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Zsuzsanna Gahse is a Hungarian-born German-language writer and translator who lives in Switzerland. Life and works Gahse is the daughter of Hungarian parents and Hungarian is her mother tongue. Her family fled to the West after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and settled in Vienna, where Gahse attended high school and learnt the German language. She began publishing literary works in 1969, and from 1978, encouraged by her mentor Helmut Heißenbüttel, translating works from Hungarian. She has published German translations of works by István Eörsi, Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas and Zsuzsa Rakovszky, as well as producing a range of essays and fiction under her own name.

#3365

Patrick Taylor

#52352

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Patrick Taylor is a retired medical researcher, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and best-selling novelist. Biography Born in 1941 and brought up in Bangor, Northern Ireland, Taylor studied and practiced medicine in Belfast and rural Ulster before immigrating to Canada in 1970 to work in the field of human infertility. From 1987 to 1989 he worked at the Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic in association with 2010 Nobel laureate Sir Robert Edwards. Taylor has received three lifetime achievement awards including the Lifetime Award of Excellence in Reproductive Medicine of the Ca...

#3366

Uta Hagen

#35775

Overall Influence

1919 - 2004 (85 years)

Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, who called her "a profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre.

#3367

Tordis Ørjasæter

#92253

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Tordis Ørjasæter is a Norwegian literary critic, biographer, former professor of educational science, and novelist. She has been particularly engaged in culture and literature for children. She has written biographical works on Sigrid Undset, Selma Lagerlöf, Tove Jansson, and Nini Roll Anker. She was awarded the Brage Prize in 1993.

#3368

Kim Wonu

#57094

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Kim Wonu is a modern South Korean novelist. Life Kim Wonu was born on April 11, 1947, with sources unclear on Gimhae Gyeongsangnam-do or Jinju Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea. Kim attended Gyeongbuk University from which he received his B.A. in English and Sogang University from which he received and M.A. in Korean. He has been a member of the group "Jakga" since 1979 and served as Editor in Chief on Minumsa Publishing.

#3369

Latifa Ben Mansour

#38549

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Latifa Ben Mansour is an Algerian writer, psychoanalyst, and linguist. Her work deals with issues such as the role of women in Algerian society, Islamic extremism, storytelling, trauma, and memory.

#3370

Anique Poitras

#107194

Overall Influence

1961 - 2016 (55 years)

Anique Poitras was an award-winning writer in Quebec, Canada, whose work was aimed mostly at adolescent readers. She was born in L'Épiphanie and lived there until the age of 13. Poitras received a bachelor's degree in literary studies from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

#3371

Miriam Leonard

#67545

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Miriam Anna Leonard is Professor of Greek Literature and its Reception at University College, London. She is known in particular for her work on the reception of Greek tragedy in modern intellectual thought.

#3372

Jiří Pechar

#85563

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Jiří Pechar was a Czech philosopher and translator. Life and career Born in Příbram, Pechar studied in history of literature at the Charles University, and worked as an editor for the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, before being dismissed for political reasons in 1958. He then worked as a freelance translator, translating in Czech works by Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean-François Lyotard and Claude Lévi-Strauss among others, and was also an author of essays and collection of poems and a collaborator of magazines and journals.

#3373

Ulrich K. Goldsmith

#64925

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Ulrich K. Goldsmith was an American scholar of literature and emeritus professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Biography Ulrich K. Goldsmith was born in 1910 in Freiburg and had to leave Germany in 1932-1933 because of his Jewish origins and Nazi persecution. He came to the United States via England and Canada and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950, with a dissertation on Stefan George. He was appointed professor of Germanic languages and literatures at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1957 where he died emeritus in 2000. He chaired the...

#3374

J. E. Franklin

#44128

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

J. E. Franklin is an American playwright, best known for her play Black Girl, which was broadcast on public television in 1969, staged Off-Broadway in 1971, and made into a feature film in 1972. She has written and adapted eleven plays for television, theater, and film.

#3375

Wang Wen-hsing

#63315

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Wang Wen-hsing was a Taiwanese writer. Life and career Wang obtained a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures from National Taiwan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He returned to NTU's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures to teach, retiring in 2005 at the rank of Professor.

#3376

Vivian Stanshall

Vivian Stanshall

#44387

Overall Influence

1943 - 1995 (52 years)

Vivian Stanshall was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End , and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.

#3377

Jilani Kamran

#81829

Overall Influence

1926 - 2003 (77 years)

Professor Jilani Kamran , also spelled Gilani Kamran, was a Pakistani poet, critic, teacher, and the head of Forman Christian College at English department. He wrote about thirty-five books, comprising poems and some uncertain genres, he is also credited for translating the publications of a 9th century's Sufi poet Khwaja Ghulam Farid into English.

#3378

Andrew McCann

#39402

Overall Influence

Andrew McCann is an Australian professor and fiction writer. He used the pen name "A. L. McCann" for his first book, The White Body of Evening, to avoid confusion with fellow Australian writer Andrew McGahan. His second fiction book, Subtopia, is a coming-of-age novel that takes place in "south-eastern suburbs in the 1970s, St Kilda in the 1980s and Berlin in the 1990s." He is an Associate Professor of English at Dartmouth College. He has been called a post-grunge lit writer, a reference to an Australian literary genre from the 2000s which emerged following the 1990s grunge lit genre.

#3379

Paul Yoon

#88393

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Paul Yoon is an American fiction writer. In 2010 The National Book Foundation named him a 5 Under 35 honoree. Early life and education Yoon's grandfather was a North Korean refugee who resettled in South Korea, where he later founded an orphanage. Yoon graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1998 and Wesleyan University in 2002.

#3380

Lisa Jarnot

#86942

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Lisa Jarnot is an American poet. She was born in Buffalo, New York and studied literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1994 she received an MFA in creative writing from Brown University. She has lived in San Francisco, Boulder, Providence, and London. Since the mid-1990s she has been a resident of New York City. She has taught creative writing and literature at Brooklyn College, Long Island University, Naropa University, and the Poetry Project in New York City.

#3381

Peter Finch

#78171

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Peter Finch is a Welsh author, psychogeographer and poet living in Cardiff, Wales. Early life Finch was born in Cardiff, Wales, in March 1947, son of Stanley and Marjorie Finch, a post office worker and a telephonist. He attended school in the city and took up his first job as a trainee local government accountant at Glamorgan County Council in 1963.

#3382

David Thompson

#57288

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

David Thompson is an American writer, playwright, and producer. His notable theater productions include Chicago, The Scottsboro Boys, The Prince of Broadway, and New York, New York. Thompson was born in La Grange, IL, and attended Lyons Township High School. Thompson is a graduate from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Thompson is a resident of Millburn, New Jersey.

#3383

Alberto Blanco

#89627

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Alberto Blanco is a Mexican poet. Born in Mexico City, he spent his childhood and adolescence in that city, and he studied chemistry at the Universidad Iberoamericana and philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. For two years, he pursued a master's degree in Asian Studies, specializing in China, at El Colegio de México.1 Blanco was first published in a journal in 1970. He was co-editor and designer of the poetry journal El Zaguan , and a grant recipient of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores , el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes , and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes .

#3384

Federico Jeanmaire

#97818

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Federico Jeanmaire is an Argentine writer. He was born in the town of Baradero. He studied at the University of Buenos Aires, and later became a professor at the same institution. He specializes in the literature of the Siglo de Oro, including the life and work of Miguel de Cervantes. He has published more than 20 books of fiction and non-fiction, and has won a number of Argentine literary prizes. Among his noted works are the novels Mitre , Vida interior , and Más liviano que el aire . His 1990 novel Miguel, a fictional biography of Cervantes, was nominated for the Premio Herralde, as was the later novel Amores enanos.

#3385

Anna Journey

#74347

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Anna Journey is an American poet and essayist who was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. She is the author of the essay collection An Arrangement of Skin and three books of poems: The Atheist Wore Goat Silk , Vulgar Remedies , and If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting , the latter of which was selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California, where she is an assistant professor of English.

#3386

Marco Belpoliti

#75953

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Marco Belpoliti is an Italian writer, essayist and critic, who contributes regularly to La Repubblica and L'Espresso, and is currently a professor at the University of Bergamo. He is the author of many books and edited the Einaudi edition of the complete works of Primo Levi.

#3387

Bhisham Sahni

#78281

Overall Influence

1915 - 2003 (88 years)

Bhisham Sahni was an Indian writer, playwright in Hindi and an actor, most famous for his novel and television screenplay Tamas , a powerful and passionate account of the Partition of India. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for literature in 1998, and Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2002. He was the younger brother of the noted Hindi film actor, Balraj Sahni.

#3388

Julie Orringer

#66564

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Julie Orringer is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor. She attended Cornell University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She was born in Miami, Florida and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, fellow writer Ryan Harty. She is the author of The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestseller, and How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; her novel, The Flight Portfolio, tells the story of Varian Fry, the New York journalist who went to Marseille in 1940 to save writers and artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. The nove...

#3389

Martin McQuillan

#74507

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Martin McQuillan is a Scottish-born literary theorist, cultural critic and journalist currently employed at Edge Hill University. He was Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University, London, where he was also Co-Director of The London Graduate School, and was Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Business and Innovation between 2015 and 2017. He was previously Pro-Dean of Research for the Faculty of Performance, Visual Arts and Communications at the University of Leeds, where he was also Head of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies .

#3390

Gary Taylor

#56289

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Gary Taylor is an American academic, George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University, author of numerous books and articles, and joint editor of The Oxford Shakespeare and The Oxford Middleton.

#3391

Hussein Barghouthi

#76103

Overall Influence

1954 - 2002 (48 years)

Hussein Jamil Barghouthi, also spelled Barghouti, was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, playwright and philosopher, born in the village of Kobar in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. Barghouthi lived his childhood between Kobar, where his mother lived, and Beirut, where his father worked. An outcast since childhood, seen and treated by his society as different and distant for being unique, he found his friends to be the rocks and trees of his village, and the words of his language. He was misunderstood by his surroundings, and was too different from his society by th...

#3392

Tom Perrotta

#66142

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Thomas R. Perrotta is an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his novels Election and Little Children , both of which were made into critically acclaimed, Academy Award-nominated films. Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film version of Little Children with Todd Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also known for his novel The Leftovers , which has been adapted into a TV series on HBO.

#3393

Diego Martínez Torrón

#108676

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Diego Martínez Torrón is a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Córdoba, Spain, and a writer, author of essays, poetry and novels. He has been a speaker at many of the major universities in Europe and the United States. A specialist in nineteenth and twentieth century Spanish literature he has published numerous books on Spanish Romanticism, with interpretive contributions and unpublished texts. He has edited the most faithful edition of the complete works of authors such as José de Espronceda and the Duque de Rivas. He has also written about Lista and Quintana and the work of...

#3394

Peter Foote

#54419

Overall Influence

1924 - 2009 (85 years)

Peter Godfrey Foote was a scholar of Old Norse literature and Scandinavian studies. He inaugurated the Department of Scandinavian Studies at University College London, and headed it for 20 years. Early life and education Foote was born and raised in Swanage, Dorset, the fourth of five sons of a butcher. His two eldest brothers had to leave school at 14; he and the other younger boys were able to attend grammar school. In 1942 he entered University College of the South West of England on a scholarship.

#3395

Don Black

#45963

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Donald Blackstone known by pen name Don Black is an English lyricist. His works have included numerous musicals, movie, television themes and hit songs. He has provided lyrics for John Barry, Charles Strouse, Matt Monro, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Quincy Jones, Hoyt Curtin, Lulu, Jule Styne, Henry Mancini, Meat Loaf, Michael Jackson, Elmer Bernstein, Michel Legrand, Hayley Westenra, A. R. Rahman, Marvin Hamlisch and Debbie Wiseman.

#3396

Shabnam Shakeel

Shabnam Shakeel

#74911

Overall Influence

1942 - 2013 (71 years)

Shabnam Shakeel was a Pakistani poet, writer, and academician. Shabnam spent her early life in Lahore, Pakistan, and received a master's degree in Urdu literature. During her career, she worked as a lecturer at several colleges in Pakistan. Her first book Tanqeedi Mazameen, was published in 1965. She won numerous awards, honours and titles for her contributions to Urdu literature including the prestigious presidents' Pride of Performance award in 2005.

#3397

Jean Moorcroft Wilson

#45797

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a British academic and writer, best known as a biographer and critic of First World War poets and poetry. A lecturer in English at Birkbeck, University of London, she has written a two-volume biography of Siegfried Sassoon, as well as works on Virginia Woolf, Charles Sorley, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg and William Watson. Her husband was the publisher Cecil Woolf .

#3398

Deborah Eisenberg

#75040

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Deborah Eisenberg is an American short story writer, actress and teacher. She is a professor of writing at Columbia University. Early life Eisenberg was born in Winnetka, Illinois. Her family is Jewish. She grew up in suburban Chicago, Illinois, and moved to New York City in the late 1960s.

#3399

Roderick Hunt

#38153

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Roderick James Hunt is a British children's author. His most famous series of stories is The Magic Key, which was first written as a part of the Oxford Reading Tree in 1985 and illustrated by Alex Brychta MBE. There were originally 30 stories, and there are now over 400.

#3400

Cathryn Hankla

#77196

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Cathryn Hankla is an American poet, novelist, essayist and author of short stories. She is professor emerita of English and Creative Writing at Hollins University in Hollins, Virginia, and served as inaugural director of Hollins' Jackson Center for Creative Writing from 2008 to 2012.

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