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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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#4401

Aileen Ward

#78234

Overall Influence

1919 - 2016 (97 years)

Aileen Ward , was an American professor of English literature who won both a National Book Award and a Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for her book "John Keats: The Making of a Poet". Early life and education Aileen Coursen Ward was born on April 1, 1919, in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in Summit, N.J. Her father, Waldron, was a lawyer; her mother was the former Aline Coursen.

#4402

Lado Kralj

#94643

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Lado Kralj was a Slovene writer, theatre critic and literary historian. From 1987 to 2005 he worked as a professor in comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana. He published and contributed to numerous books on literature and theatre.

#4403

Deborah Wiles

#91512

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Deborah Wiles is a children's book author. Her second novel, Each Little Bird That Sings, was a 2005 National Book Award finalist. Her documentary novel, Revolution, was a 2014 National Book Award finalist. Wiles received the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2004 and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Award in 2005. Her fiction centers on home, family, kinship, and community, and often deals with historical events , social justice issues, and childhood reactions to those events, as well as everyday childhood moments and mysteries, most taken directly from her childhood. She often says, ...

#4404

Victoria Redel

#88955

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Victoria Redel is an American poet and fiction writer who lives in New York City. She is the author of five books of fiction: Before Everything, Make Me Do Things, The Border of Truth, Loverboy and Where the Road Bottoms Out and four books of poetry: 'Paradise,'Woman Without Umbrella, Swoon, and Already the World. She has taught at Columbia University, Vermont College and is currently on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has two sons.

#4405

Mark Ford

#60036

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Mark Ford is a British poet. He is currently Professor of English in the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London. Life Mark Ford was born in Nairobi, Kenya on the 24th June, 1962 to Donald and Mary Ford. His father worked for the airlines BOAC, then British Airways. As a result, he had a peripatetic childhood, moving 'to a new country roughly every 18 months', accompanied by a 'sense of rootlessness or of not belonging'.

#4406

Harry Guest

#76452

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Harry Guest was a British poet born in Wales. Life and career Harry Guest was educated at Malvern College and read Modern Languages at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He wrote a thesis on Mallarmé at the Sorbonne. At Trinity Hall he co-edited the poetry magazine Chequer, which continued for eleven issues and published poems by Thom Gunn, Anne Stevenson, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath, though there is no evidence to suggest he met Plath or Hughes. From 1955-66, he taught at Felsted School and Lancing College, and then moved to Japan, becoming a lecturer in English at Yokohama National University. He returned to England in 1972 and was Head of French at Exeter School until his retirement in 1991.

#4407

John Higgins

#90990

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

John Higgins is an English comic book artist and writer. He did significant work for 2000 AD, and he has frequently worked with writer Alan Moore, most notably as colourist for Watchmen. Biography John Higgins was born in Walton, Liverpool. After leaving school when he was 15, he joined the army and, on leaving, spent some time in a commune in Wiltshire. He returned to Liverpool and, in 1971, resumed his studies at Wallasey College of Art. There, in 1974 he qualified in technical illustration, which allowed him to get a job as a medical illustrator at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

#4408

K. O. Arvidson

#97500

Overall Influence

1938 - 2011 (73 years)

Kenneth Owen Arvidson , was a New Zealand poet and academic. Early life Arvidson was born in Hamilton and attended Catholic schools there and in Auckland. His secondary education took place at Sacred Heart College.

#4409

Tom Fontana

#55042

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Tom Fontana is an American screenwriter, writer, and television producer. Fontana worked on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street and created HBO's Oz. Early life and education Fontana was born on the west side of Buffalo, New York, and is the fourth of five children in an Italian-American family; he is a cousin of actress Patti LuPone. He attended Cathedral School, Canisius High School, and Buffalo State College. He worked at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo in various capacities before moving to New York City in 1973. Fontana struggled with substance abuse for much of his early adulthood...

#4410

Mark Gruenwald

#70756

Overall Influence

1953 - 1996 (43 years)

Mark Eugene Gruenwald was an American comic book writer, editor, and occasional penciler known for his long association with Marvel Comics. Biography Early career Gruenwald got his start in comics fandom, publishing his own fanzine, Omniverse, which explored the concept of continuity. Before being hired by Marvel, he wrote text articles for DC Comics’ official fanzine, The Amazing World of DC Comics. Articles by Gruenwald include "The Martian Chronicles" in issue #13 and several articles on the history of the Justice League in issue #14.

#4411

Aftab Iqbal Shamim

#111224

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Aftab Iqbal Shamim is an Urdu language poet and an educator from Pakistan. Career Aftab Iqbal was born in Jhelum, Pakistan in 1933. Aftab Iqbal Shamim had served as a professor of English literature and language for 33 years at Government Gordon College, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Meanwhile, he also taught Urdu language and literature to Chinese students at Beijing University for 12 years. His Chinese students have and had served in various high positions such as ambassadors, cultural secretaries, counsellors and high government officials in China and Pakistan.

#4412

David Mamet

#68781

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow . He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 1970s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.

#4413

Ruth Scodel

#123693

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Ruth Scodel is an American classicist. She is the D.R. Shackleton-Bailey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. Scodel specialises in ancient Greek literature, with particular interests in Homer, Hesiod and Greek Tragedy. Her research has been influenced by narrative theory, cognitive approaches, and politeness theory.

#4414

Rubén Gallo

#35414

Overall Influence

Rubén Gallo is the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor in Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain at Princeton University, specializing in modern and contemporary Spanish America. He also serves as Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, and has directed Princeton's program in Latin American Studies since 2008. He holds a B.A. in English from Yale University and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia University.

#4415

Beth Henley

#71832

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Elizabeth Becker Henley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actress. Her play Crimes of the Heart won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 1981 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, and a nomination for a Tony Award. Her screenplay for Crimes of the Heart was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

#4416

Linda Svendsen

#99452

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Linda Svendsen is a Canadian screenwriter and author. Biography She has lived in her birth city for most of her life. Her works include many critically acclaimed short stories. Her stories were anthologized and published in magazines such as Atlantic Monthly and Saturday Night. She won first prize in the American Short Story Contest in 1980, and was a three-time finalist for the O. Henry Awards.

#4417

Francisco Jiménez

Francisco Jiménez

#69948

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Francisco Jiménez is a Mexican-American writer and professor at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. Personal life Francisco Jiménez was born in 1943 in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, as the second oldest of eight children. Up until he was four years old, he lived in a town in the state of Jalisco, Mexico called El Rancho Blanco. His family then immigrated to California to work as migrant farm workers. When he was six years old, he already started working in the fields with his family. Growing up, his family would move with the seasons of crops, causing him to miss months of school every ...

#4418

Kathleen Fraser

#107305

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Kathleen Fraser was a contemporary poet. She was a Guggenheim Fellow. Early years Fraser was born in 1935 and grew up in Oklahoma, Colorado, and California. She graduated from Occidental College. Career During her teaching career at San Francisco State University from 1972 to 1992, she directed The Poetry Center and founded The American Poetry Archives; she also wrote and narrated the one-hour video Women Working in Literature.

#4419

Lucy Taxis Shoe Meritt

#93008

Overall Influence

1906 - 2003 (97 years)

Lucy Taxis Shoe Meritt was a classical archaeologist and a scholar of Greek architectural ornamentation and mouldings. Biography Born in Camden, New Jersey, Lucy Shoe Meritt was the daughter of William Napoleon Shoe and Mary Esther Dunning Shoe. She studied at Bryn Mawr College . She continued her studies at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1929 to 1934. From 1937 to 1950 Meritt taught at Mount Holyoke College. She was twice a fellow of the American Academy in Rome . She married Benjamin Dean Meritt at Princeton, New Jersey, on November 2, 1964. She worked at the Roman site of Cosa and at Serra Orlando in Sicily.

#4420

William Humphrey

#74146

Overall Influence

1924 - 1997 (73 years)

William Humphrey was an American novelist, memoirist, short story writer, and author of literary sporting and nature stories. His published works, while still available in French translation, largely have been out of print until recently. Home from the Hill and The Ordways are available from LSU Press. In 2015, Open Road Media published the complete works of William Humphrey in digital form.

#4421

Jenefer Shute

#107674

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Jenefer Shute is an author of four novels: Life-Size, Sex Crimes, Free Fall and User I.D.. She has also written for Harper's, The Nation, salon.com, The Guardian, Tikkun, the Boston Review, and Modern Fiction Studies.

#4422

Anna Smaill

#93625

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Anna Smaill is a New Zealand poet and novelist, and a former violinist. Early life and education Smaill was born in Auckland in 1979. She started playing the violin aged seven. She studied musical performance at the University of Canterbury in the late 1990s and during her time at Canterbury, she decided to not become a professional violinist, but pursue a career in writing instead. She began studying English and music theory, before changing to the University of Auckland, from where she graduated with a master's degree in English. She spent the following year in Wellington at Victoria Univer...

#4423

Pablo Medina

#75154

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Pablo Medina is a Cuban American poet and novelist, Professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College and Director of its MFA Program. Biography Medina was born in Havana, Cuba and emigrated to New York City in 1960. He received an M.A. degree from Georgetown University.

#4424

Eugene Curtsinger

#81523

Overall Influence

1924 - 2008 (84 years)

Eugene Curtsinger was an American literary scholar, academic administrator and novelist. He began his career at Marquette University and taught at the University of Dallas for five decades, where he was the founding dean and the chair of its English department. He authored eight novels.

#4425

Krassin Himmirsky

Krassin Himmirsky

#131120

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Krassin Valchev Himmirsky is a Bulgarian poet and former career diplomat. Diplomatic career Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in International Relations with Indonesian language . Received a PhD degree in American Literature after defending a thesis on “The Development of the Democratic Traditions in Contemporary American Poetry” in the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow .

#4426

Mary Kinzie

#84784

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Mary Kinzie is an American poet. Life She received her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1967, and returned there to teach in 1975. She won Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson fellowships to do graduate work at the Free University of Berlin and Johns Hopkins University.

#4427

Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke

#97005

Overall Influence

1939 - 2020 (81 years)

Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was a Greek poet, translator and lecturer. Life Anghelaki-Rooke was born in Athens, the daughter of Eleni from Patras and Yannis Anghelakis from Asia Minor. Her godfather was the Cretan writer Nikos Kazantzakis, a close friend of her parents. She married Rodney Rooke in 1963. While a very young child she contracted a bacterial infection that ate affected her bones and left her with a severe limp and a stunted arm. She attended primary and secondary school in Athens. She followed courses at the Universities of Athens and Nice, completing her studies with a degree in t...

#4428

Russell T Davies

Russell T Davies

#89471

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Stephen Russell Davies , better known as Russell T Davies, is a Welsh screenwriter and television producer whose works include Queer as Folk, Bob & Rose, The Second Coming, Casanova, the 2005 revival of the BBC One science fiction franchise Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Cucumber, A Very English Scandal, Years and Years, It's a Sin and Nolly.

#4429

Jim Taylor

#93219

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jim Taylor is an American producer and screenwriter who has often collaborated on projects with Alexander Payne. The two are business partners in the Santa Monica based Ad Hominem Enterprises, and are credited as co-writers of six films released between 1996 and 2007: Citizen Ruth , Election , Jurassic Park III , About Schmidt , Sideways , and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry . Taylor's credits as a producer include films such as Cedar Rapids and The Descendants.

#4430

Philip Neilsen

#104965

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Philip Max Neilsen is an Australian poet, fiction writer and editor. He teaches poetry at the University of Queensland and was previously professor of creative writing at the Queensland University of Technology.

#4431

V. B. Price

#58841

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Vincent Barrett Price is an American poet, human rights and environmental columnist, editor, reporter, publisher, and teacher. His most recent works include the poetry volumes Polishing the Mountain, or Catching Balance Just in Time: Selected Poems 2008–2020, Innocence Regained: Christmas Poems, and Memoirs of the World in Ten Fragments, and the nonfiction book The Orphaned Land: New Mexico's Environment Since the Manhattan Project. He is the co-founder, with Benito Aragon, of the New Mexico Mercury, an online platform featuring news, commentary and analysis from a variety of experts and writers around New Mexico.

#4432

Thomas Lynch

#75616

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Thomas Lynch is an American poet, essayist, and undertaker. Early life Lynch was educated by nuns and Christian Brothers at Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Lynch then went to university and mortuary school, from which he graduated in 1973. He took over his father's funeral home in Milford, Michigan in 1974, a job he has held ever since. Lynch married in 1972 and divorced in 1984. He later remarried to Mary Tata in 1991. He has a daughter and three sons.

#4433

Yvonne Craig

#56446

Overall Influence

1937 - 2015 (78 years)

Yvonne Joyce Craig was an American actress who was renowned for her role as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in the 1960s television series Batman. Other notable roles in her career include Dorothy Johnson in the 1963 movie It Happened at the World's Fair, Azalea Tatum in the 1964 movie Kissin' Cousins and as the green-skinned Orion Marta in the Star Trek episode "Whom Gods Destroy" .

#4434

Richard Price

#64049

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Richard John Price is a British poet, novelist, and translator. Life He grew up in Renfrewshire where he went to Kilmacolm Primary School, Houston Primary School, and Gryffe High School. He studied at Napier College, in journalism, and graduated the University of Strathclyde in English and Librarianship, with a joint first. He earned a PhD at University of Strathclyde.

#4435

Danny Smith

#94333

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Danny Smith is an American producer, writer and voice actor on the American animated television series Family Guy. He has been with the show since its inception and throughout the years has contributed to many episodes, such as "Holy Crap", "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz", "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" and the Christmas themed episodes, "Road to the North Pole" and "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas". Smith also voices the Evil Monkey, the Giant Chicken, Buzz Killington and Al Harrington. Smith has also written many songs for Family Guy, including "Prom Night Dumpster Baby", "...

#4436

Pol Popovic Karic

Pol Popovic Karic

#109026

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Pol Popovic Karic is a professor and research in Spanish, English and French literature at the Tec de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey. He has published and edited a number of books as well as articles for Mexican and international journals. His research work has been recognized with Level II membership in the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores and the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias.

#4437

Raffaella Barker

#95903

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Raffaella Flora Barker is an English author. Born in London, she moved when she was three and was brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the one of the poet George Barker's fifteen children, the eldest of the five he had with novelist Elspeth Barker. She lives in Norfolk, England with her family.

#4438

Andrew Denton

#49622

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Andrew Christopher Denton is an Australian television producer, comedian, Gold Logie–nominated television presenter and former radio host, and was the host of the ABC's weekly television interview program Enough Rope and the ABC game show Randling. He is known for his comedy and interviewing technique. He is also responsible for introducing the troupe of The Chaser to Australian audiences.

#4439

Darko Tanasković

Darko Tanasković

#85130

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Darko Tanasković is a Serbian university professor of Oriental studies, writer, translator, academic and diplomat. Tanasković was the Ambassador of Serbia to Turkey, Azerbaijan, Vatican City, Sovereign Military Order of Malta and UNESCO. He authored over 600 scientific works and articles.

#4440

Wilson Martins

#63896

Overall Influence

1921 - 2010 (89 years)

Wilson Martins was a Brazilian literary critic and cultural historian who was a regular contributor for the Jornal do Brasil and O Estado de S.Paulo. He graduated from the Universidade Federal do Paraná and taught at New York University from 1965 to 1991. In 2002, the Academia Brasileira de Letras awarded him the Prêmio Machado de Assis for his lifetime's work.

#4441

Stephen Kuusisto

#99722

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Stephen Kuusisto is an American poet who is known for his work on depicting disabilities, specifically blindness. He is a professor at Syracuse University, where he teaches poetry and creative non-fiction. He also directs the Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach Initiative at the university's Burton Blatt Institute.

#4442

Meg Bateman

#56646

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Vivienne Margaret 'Meg' Bateman is a Scottish academic, poet and short story writer. She is best known for her works written in Scottish Gaelic; however, she has also published work in the English language.

#4443

Justin Quinn

#49805

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Justin Quinn is an Irish poet and critic. He received a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, where his contemporaries included poets David Wheatley, Caitriona O'Reilly and Sinéad Morrissey, and now lives with his wife and sons in Prague. He is a lecturer at Charles University and the University of West Bohemia.

#4444

Peter Doyle

#90315

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Peter Doyle is an Australian author, musician, and visual artist. He lives in Newtown, New South Wales, and works for Macquarie University where he teaches Print Media Production and as a part-time curator of Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum.

#4445

Mircea Sântimbreanu

#130123

Overall Influence

1926 - 1999 (73 years)

Mircea Sântimbreanu was a Romanian writer, journalist, screenwriter and film producer. Sântimbreanu was the director of the publishing house Albatros, and is best remembered as a writer of children's literature. The literary magazine Observator Cultural listed Sântimbreanu as one of the leading writers of children's literature in Romania, among others such as Dumitru Almaș, Călin Gruia, Gica Iuteș, Octav Pancu-Iași, and Ovidiu Zotta.

#4446

William Nericcio

William Nericcio

#85425

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

William Anthony Nericcio, aka Memo, is a Chicano literary theorist, cultural critic, American Literature scholar, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. Currently Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences program, he is the author of the award-winning Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America, The Hurt Business: Oliver Mayer's Early Works Plus, and Homer From Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for the Californias. Nericcio is also a graphic designer, creating book covers, film posters, and websit...

#4447

David Housewright

David Housewright

#84397

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David Housewright is an Edgar Award-winning author of crime fiction and past President of the Private Eye Writers of America best known for his Holland Taylor and Rushmore McKenzie detective novels. Housewright won the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America as well as a nomination from the PWA for his first novel "Penance." He has also earned three Minnesota Book Awards. Most of his novels take place in and around the greater St. Paul and Minneapolis area of Minnesota, USA and have been favorably compared to Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Robert B. Parker.

#4448

Graham McCann

#50254

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Graham McCann is a British author and historian who has written extensively on film and television stars and British comedy series. He is a former lecturer and fellow at the University of Cambridge where he taught social and political theory. McCann has become noted for his biographies on figures such as Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, John Le Mesurier, Woody Allen and Terry-Thomas, and books about British television comedy such as Dad's Army, Yes, Minister, Only Fools and Horses and Fawlty Towers. He also contributes to various newspapers.

#4449

Leiji Matsumoto

Leiji Matsumoto

#39620

Overall Influence

1938 - 2023 (85 years)

was a Japanese manga artist, and creator of several anime and manga series. His widow Miyako Maki is also a manga artist. Matsumoto was famous for his space operas such as Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999. His style was characterized by mythological and often tragic storylines with strong moral themes, noble heroes, feminine heroines, and a love of strange worlds and melancholic atmosphere.

#4450

Joanna Ruocco

#116204

Overall Influence

Joanna Ruocco is a prize-winning American author and co-editor of the fiction journal Birkensnake. In 2013, she received the Pushcart Prize for her story "If the Man Took" and is also winner of the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Ruocco received her MFA at Brown, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Denver. Her most recent novel is Dan, published by Dorothy, a publishing project. She also serves as assistant professor in creative writing at Wake Forest University.

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