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 people in Literature,
#4651
David Huddle
#101884
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David Ross Huddle is an American writer and professor. His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Story, The Autumn House Anthology of Poetry, and The Best American Short Stories. His work has also been included in anthologies of writing about the Vietnam War. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and currently teaches creative fiction, poetry, and autobiography at the University of Vermont and at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Huddle was born in Ivanhoe, Wythe County, Virginia, and he is sometimes considered an Appalachian writer.
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Sheryl St. Germain
#91793
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sheryl St. Germain is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She is of Cajun and Creole descent. Her father was Jules St. Francois St. Germain and her mother Myrl Marie Frank. Born and raised in south Louisiana, much of her work deals with the culture and environment of Louisiana. Currently, she directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has also taught at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, 1991–94; Knox College, 1994–98; and Iowa State University, 1998-2005.
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Rod Smith
#84590
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Rod Smith is an American poet, editor and publisher. Life He was born in Gallipolis, Ohio. He grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1987. Smith has authored several collections of poetry, including In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, and Music or Honesty. He has taught creative writing at George Mason University where he is finishing his MFA. Smith currently teaches Cultural Studies at Towson University, and was a visiting writer at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the Spring of 2010. Smith is co-editor of The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley, along with ...
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Astro Teller
#7507
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Eric "Astro" Teller is an American entrepreneur, computer scientist, and author, with expertise in the field of intelligent technology. Early life and education Teller was born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Evanston, Illinois, US. He is the son of Paul Teller, who was an instructor in the philosophy of science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chantal DeSoto, a buyer and clothing designer for Sears who later became a teacher of gifted children. His grandparents include both French economist and mathematician Gérard Debreu and Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist Edward Teller.
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Charlie Rubin
#117233
Overall Influence
Charlie Rubin is an American television comedy writer, producer, and humorist. He has written for National Lampoon, The Carol Burnett Show, In Living Color, The Jon Stewart Show, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
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Mariwan Kanie
#60792
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mariwan Wrya Kanie is a Kurdish intellectual, writer, and political scientist. Since 1993 he lives and works in the Netherlands. He is a lecturer on the Middle East and the Arab World at the Faculty of Humanities, the Department of Hebrew, Arabic, and Jewish studies University of Amsterdam.
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Lee Gowan
#115377
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Nelson Lee Gowan is a Canadian novelist. Gowan grew up on a farm near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and studied at the University of British Columbia, where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. Gowan is presently based in Toronto where he heads the creative writing program at the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto.
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Philip A. Stadter
#89217
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Philip Austin Stadter was a leading American scholar of Greek historiography and an authority on the author Plutarch. Stadter was a long-time faculty member of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Larry Watson
#88032
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Larry Watson is an American author of novels, poetry and short stories. Early life He was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota. He graduated from Bismarck State College, then earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of North Dakota. He subsequently earned a Doctorate in creative writing from the University of Utah.
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Sonia Johnson
#16410
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Sonia Ann Johnson, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She was eventually excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.
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Joan Solà i Cortassa
#107708
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Joan Solà Cortassa was a Spanish linguist and philologist. He was professor of Catalan language and literature at the University of Barcelona from 1984 onwards, and vice president of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans from 2009.
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Naoki Inose
#54211
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
is a Japanese politician, journalist, historian, social critic and biographer of literary figures such as Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Tokyo from June 2007 until becoming Acting Governor on 1 November 2012 following the resignation of Shintaro Ishihara. He was elected Governor in a historical landslide victory in December 2012, but announced his resignation on December 19, 2013, following a political funds-related scandal; his resignation was approved and became effective December 24, 2013.
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Grant Ginder
#93600
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Grant Ginder is an American novelist, academic, and former political aide. Background and education Ginder grew up in Laguna Beach, California. He received a bachelor of arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a master of fine arts from New York University. At the latter, Ginder studied under novelists Junot Diaz and Colson Whitehead.
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Michael Byers
#103559
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Michael Byers is an American writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and of the University of Michigan Creative Writing MFA Program. His first book, The Coast of Good Intentions, is a collection of short stories set in his native Pacific Northwest. His second book , Long for this World, is set in his hometown of Seattle, Washington, and tells the story of a geneticist facing an ethical dilemma that might lead to a cure for a fatal childhood disease. His third book, Percival's Planet, a novel about the discovery of Pluto in 1930, was published in August 2010.
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Andrew Cowan
#123518
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andrew Cowan is an English novelist and nonfiction author, who directed the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia in 2008–18. His six novels include Pig . Biography Andrew Cowan was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, in 1960, and educated at Beanfield Comprehensive and the University of East Anglia . He graduated from UEA with a BA in English & American Studies in 1983 and an MA in creative writing in 1985. His teachers on the MA were Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.
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Doireann MacDermott
#53691
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
Doireann MacDermott is an Irish translator, writer, an academic in the field of Spanish philology, and a retired professor of English studies at the University of Barcelona. She pioneered the study of the language and literature of the English-speaking countries of the former Commonwealth.
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Jennifer duBois
#96696
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Jennifer duBois is an American novelist. duBois is a recipient of a Whiting Award and has been named a "5 Under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. Life and Work duBois is a graduate of Tufts University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. From 2009 to 2011, she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
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John Smith
#63092
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
John William Smith was a Canadian poet. Early years Born in Toronto, Ontario to English immigrant parents, Smith earned a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Toronto. He then studied philosophy in London, and later returned to Toronto to earn an MA in English.
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Alfred Bendixen
#122121
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Alfred Bendixen is a lecturer in the department of English at Princeton University and the founder and Executive Director of the American Literature Association. Bendixen gained a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in 1979, with a thesis on "Americans in Europe before 1865 : a study of the travel book". He held posts at Barnard College and California State University, Los Angeles before moving to Texas A&M University, where he served as the Associate Department Head of English and a Professor of English . He now serves as a Lecturer in English at Princeton University.
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Will McIntosh
#85796
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Will McIntosh is a science fiction and young adult author, a Hugo-Award-winner, and a winner or finalist for many other awards. Along with ten novels, including Defenders, Love Minus Eighty, and Burning Midnight, he has published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Interzone. His stories are frequently reprinted in different "Year's Best" anthologies.
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Bruce Bond
#103544
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Bruce Bond is an American poet and creative writing educator at the University of North Texas. Formal education & academic career Bond earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Pomona College, a Master of Arts degree in English from Claremont Graduate School, and a Masters in Music Performance degree from the Lamont School of Music of the University of Denver. He then worked several years as a classical and jazz guitarist. In 1987, he earned a PhD in English from the University of Denver. Since then, he has taught at the University of Kansas, Wichita State University, Wilfrid Laurier...
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Gay Wilson Allen
#117410
Overall Influence
1903 - 1995 (92 years)
Gay Wilson Allen was an American academic and writer. After holding assistant and associate professorships between the late 1920s to mid 1930s, Allen was hired by Bowling Green University in 1935 as an associate professor. Upon leaving for New York University in 1946, Allen was an English professor until 1969. Apart from working as a visiting scholar until the late 1970s, Allen was on a literary trip with William Faulkner that was sponsored by the United States Department of State during 1955.
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Klaus-Michael Bogdal
#118483
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Klaus-Michael Bogdal is a professor of German literature at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature at Bielefeld University. Academia Klaus-Michael Bogdal teaches and conducts research at Bielefeld University since 2001. He was head of several research projects, and between 2007 and 2009 he was on sabbatical within the scope of the opus-magnum program of the Volkswagen Foundation. He is associate editor of the journal “Der Deutschunterricht“ and of several academic series. Between 1997 and 2004, he was a member of the executive board of the Deutscher Germanistenverband, at the end as its vice chairman.
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Georgios Vafopoulos
#97669
Overall Influence
1903 - 1996 (93 years)
Georgios Vafopoulos was a Greek poet, author, teacher and journalist of the 20th century. Biography Early years Vafopoulos was born on 6 September 1903 in Gevgelija, then Ottoman Empire . After the Second Balkan War, he settled in Edessa, in Fano of Kilkis, in Goumenissa and finally in Thessaloniki. In 1923 he moved to Athens, where he was enrolled in the Mathematic School of the University of Athens, but his studies got cancelled at the beginning of 1924 as he suffered from Tuberculosis. Then, he returned to Thessaloniki, and together with Kostas Kokkinos, they ran the management of the magazine "Makedonika Grammata" .
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Youssef Hourany
#45811
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Youssef Hourany was a Lebanese writer, archeologist and historian. Hourany received his diploma in philosophy, from the Lebanese University, and his PhD on the ancient philosophy of history from The Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik .
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Seth Abramson
#81795
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Seth Abramson is an American professor, attorney, author, political columnist, and poet. He is the editor of the Best American Experimental Writing series and wrote a bestselling trilogy of nonfiction works detailing the foreign policy agenda and political scandals of former president Donald Trump.
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Margaret Hubbard
#88801
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Margaret Hubbard was an Australian-born British classical scholar specialising in philology. Career Hubbard excelled during her school career at Adelaide High School, which she attended on receipt of a Government bursary won in 1938. Upon graduating from high school she won the Tennyson medal for the top place in the leaving examinations, and Annie Montgomerie Martin prize for coming top in modern history. She then studied for an undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide, reading Latin, English and Greek there,. She was then awarded a scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford ...
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Laura Maria Censabella
#116999
Overall Influence
Laura Maria Censabella is an American playwright and screenwriter. She has been awarded three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; two in playwriting for Abandoned in Queens and Three Italian Women, and The Geri Ashur Award in Screenwriting for her original screenplay Truly Mary. She is the Director of The Playwrights Unit of the Ensemble Studio Theatre
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Pauline Uwakweh
#87400
Overall Influence
Pauline Ada Uwakweh is a Nigerian writer and academic. Writing as Pauline Onwubiko, she published Running for Cover , a children's novel giving a child's-eye view of the Nigerian civil war. She is an Associate Professor of English in the English Department at North Carolina A&T State University. Her specialism is African writing and literature from the African diaspora, particularly women's writing.
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Alain Farah
#127106
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Alain Farah is a Canadian writer and academic. Born in Montreal, Quebec in 1979 to Lebanese immigrant parents, he has published two novels and a collection of poetry. His 2004 poetry collection Quelque chose se détache du port was a shortlisted nominee for the Prix Émile-Nelligan, and his poem "No. 4" was adapted as a short film by director Paule Baillargeon for the 2007 film Un Cri au bonheur. His 2013 novel Pourquoi Bologne was a shortlisted nominee for the 2013 Grand Prix du livre de Montreal and for the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2014 Governor General's Awards.
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Gabriela Aguileta
#90433
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Gabriela Aguileta Estrada is a Mexican writer of children's books and short stories. Born in Mexico City, she studied biology at the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM in Mexico and in 2004 earned a doctorate in genetics from University College London . As scientist and writer she has studied, worked and lived in Israel, Canada, England, Sweden, France, Spain and Switzerland. She was on the editorial board of the children's literary magazine La sonrisa del gato and in 2004 she was awarded a writer's fellowship from the National Foundation for Mexican Literature . She has also authored three popular science books which allowed her to promote interest in science among children and young adults.
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Achy Obejas
#87758
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Achy Obejas is a Cuban-American writer and translator focused on personal and national identity issues, living in Benicia, California. She frequently writes on her sexuality and nationality, and has received numerous awards for her creative work. Obejas' stories and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Fifth Wednesday Journal, TriQuarterly, Another Chicago Magazine and many other publications. Some of her work was originally published in Esto no tiene nombre, a Latina lesbian magazine published and edited by tatiana de la tierra, which gave voice to the Latina lesbian community. Obejas worked as a journalist in Chicago for more than two decades.
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Jean Fisher
#81860
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Jean Fisher was a UK-based art critic and writer. Her research explored the intertwined legacies of colonialism and the emergent conflicts of globalization in Ireland, Native America, the Black Atlantic and more recently Palestine. She studied zoology and fine art. In the 1980s in New York City she contributed regularly to Artforum International. At that time she curated exhibitions of contemporary Native American art with the artist Jimmie Durham. In New York she taught in the School of Visual Arts, State University of New York at Old Westbury and the Whitney Independent Study Program.
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Han Seung-won
#115537
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Han Seung-won is a South Korean writer. He primarily writes about people who struggle against their fate in Jangheung, a county situated off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula where Han himself was born. Han's work tends to have a strong sense of place; his stories are often set in his coastal hometown and contain the local dialect.
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Donald P. Bellisario
#42543
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Donald Paul Bellisario is an American television producer and screenwriter who created and wrote episodes for the TV series Magnum, P.I. , Tales of the Gold Monkey , Airwolf , Quantum Leap , JAG , and NCIS .
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Karen An-hwei Lee
#133842
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Karen An-hwei Lee is an American poet. Life Born in 1973, and raised in Massachusetts, Lee is a Chinese American poet, translator, and critic. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Brown University and a Ph.D. in literature from the University of California, Berkeley. A former resident writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts in Peterborough, New Hampshire and the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York, Lee resided in Santa Ana, California. She became vice provost for Point Loma Nazarene University in 2016. In 2020, she became provost for Wheaton College.
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Peter Campion
#141692
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Peter Campion is an American poet. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA, and from Boston University with an MA. He taught at Washington College, Ashland University, and Auburn University. He currently teaches at University of Minnesota and heads the Department of Creative Writing there.
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Elspeth Kennedy
#81864
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Elspeth Mary Kennedy, MA, DPhil, FSA was a British academic and a prominent medievalist. She is best known as the editor and author of works on medieval French literature. Early life and education Elspeth Kennedy was born in Berkshire. Her academic career was delayed by World War II, during which she worked for the government — in 1940, while still 18 years of age she began working for MI5, domiciled initially at Wormwood Scrubs and later at Bletchley Park. Because the work, though essential, was repetitive, Kennedy studied Russian in her spare time, and initially laid plans to become a Russian historian.
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Ronald Wallace
#50735
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Ronald Wallace is an American poet, and Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry & Halls-Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Life He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa He grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri. He graduated from the College of Wooster, and the University of Michigan.
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Naomi Schor
#72460
Overall Influence
1943 - 2001 (58 years)
Naomi Schor was an American literary critic and theorist. A pioneer of feminist theory for her generation, she is regarded as one of the foremost scholars of French literature and critical theory of her time. Naomi's younger sister is the artist and writer Mira Schor.
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Carol Kendall
#70555
Overall Influence
1917 - 2012 (95 years)
Carol Seeger "Siggy" Kendall was an American writer of children's books. She has received the Newbery Honor, Ohioana award, Parents choice award, and the Mythopoeic Society Aslan award. Biography Carol Kendall was born in Bucyrus, Ohio, and was a graduate of Ohio University. Some of her first books were directed at adults such as "The Black Seven" and "The Baby Snatcher" . It was her travels across the world that inspired her folk tale stories. She even gathered old folk tales from other countries and translated them into English for children. Despite her love for traveling, she always love...
Go to Profile#4692
A. J. Verdelle
#94567
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
A. J. Verdelle , is an American novelist who is published by Algonquin Books and Harper, with essays published by Crown, the Smithsonian, the Whitney Museum, Random House, and University of Georgia Press. Verdelle has forthcoming novels from Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau.
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José Antonio de Armas Chitty
#73640
Overall Influence
1908 - 1995 (87 years)
José Antonio de Armas Chitty was a Venezuelan historian, poet, chronicler, essayist, biographer and researcher. Armas Chitty was born in Caracas on 30 November 1908, when he was six years old, moved to Santa María de Ipire, a town in Guárico state, lived there until he was 27.
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Peter Nichols
#63358
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Peter Richard Nichols was an English playwright, screenwriter, director and journalist. Life and career Born in Bristol, England, he was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and served his compulsory National Service as a clerk in Calcutta and later in the British Army's Combined Services Entertainment Unit in Singapore where he entertained the troops alongside John Schlesinger, Stanley Baxter, Peter Vaughan and Kenneth Williams, before going on to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He later claimed to have studied acting because there were no dedicated courses for playwrights.
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William Nicholson
#75761
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
William Benedict Nicholson, OBE, FRSL is a British screenwriter, playwright, and novelist who has been nominated twice for an Oscar. Early life A native of Lewes, Sussex, William Nicholson was raised in a Roman Catholic family on a farm in Hillesley, Gloucestershire. By the time he reached his tenth birthday he had decided to become a writer. As a teenager he founded, edited and contributed to The Hillesley Harvester, a local newsletter for his village. He was educated at Downside School, Somerset, and Christ's College, Cambridge.
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Ming Dong Gu
#88690
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ming Dong Gu is Katherine R. Cecil Professor in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a Chinese-born scholar of comparative literature and thought. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and has taught at various U.S. universities and colleges. He has a wide range of scholarly interests covering English literature, Chinese literature, comparative literature, literary theory, comparative thought East and West, fiction theory, hermeneutics, postcolonial studies, psychoanalytic criticism, and cross-cultural studies.
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Maria Henson
#99243
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Maria Henson is an American journalist and editor, who has worked for several newspapers. She is currently an Associate Vice President at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, where she lectures in journalism and is editor of the university publication Wake Forest Magazine.
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Roberto Valero
#100553
Overall Influence
1955 - 1994 (39 years)
Roberto Valero was a Cuban poet, novelist, and educator. Life Roberto Valero was born in Matanzas Province. He attended the University of Havana before leaving Cuba during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980.
Go to Profile#4699
Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly
#112489
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly is an Irish Germanist and Founder of WiGS . Biography Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly is Emeritus Fellow and Tutor in German at Exeter College, Oxford, and Professor of German Literature at Oxford University. She specialises in the early modern period, and is a distinguished scholar in this field, and in the field of German literature as a whole. She works in particular on European court culture in the early modern period and on German literature written by women or representing women; from 2005 to 2008 she co-directed the AHRC major research project at Oxford University entitled 'The Representation of Women and Death in German Literature, Art and Media, 1500–present'.
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David Means
#69438
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
David Means is an American short story writer and novelist based in Nyack, New York. His stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker, and Harper's. They are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt, or along the Hudson River in New York.
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