Archives: Authors

Anil Seth is a leading British researcher in the field of consciousness science, and the author of the Sunday Times best-selling Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He writes regularly for New Scientist, Guardian and the BBC, and has been interviewed on Radio 4’s The Life Scientific. His TED talk on consciousness has been viewed nearly 13 million times; he is currently a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow and he tweets at @anilkseth.

R. J. Palacio was born and raised in New York City. She attended the High School of Art and Design and the Parsons School of Design, where she majored in illustration. She was a graphic designer and an art director for many years before writing her critically acclaimed debut novel, Wonder, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list since March 2012, sold over 16 million copies worldwide and been adapted into a movie.

In addition to Wonder, R. J. has written Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories, 365 Days of Wonder, We’re All Wonders and White Bird: A Wonder Story, which is soon to be a major motion picture. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, two sons and two dogs (Bear and Beau).

Follow her on Twitter: @RJPalacio

Christopher Paolini was born in Southern California and lived most of his life in Paradise Valley, Montana. The tall, jagged Beartooth Mountains that rise on one side of Paradise Valley inspired the fantastic scenery in Eragon, the first novel in his Inheritance Cycle.

Christopher’s journey to becoming a globally beloved publishing phenomenon is as magical as the fantasy novels he writes. Christopher was homeschooled by his parents and often wrote short stories and poems, made frequent trips to the library, and read widely. He was fifteen when he wrote the first draft of Eragon and his family self-published the book in 2001.

In August 2003, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers published Eragon and it was an instant success, reaching a worldwide audience. Christopher’s second novel Eldest was published in 2005, followed by Brisingr in 2008. Inheritance, the fourth and final book in the cycle released in November 2011. Additional titles in The World of Eragon include Eragon’s Guide to Alagaesia and The Fork, The Witch, and the Worm.

Today, the Inheritance Cycle is available in more than 50 countries, and together the four books in the series (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance) have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Richard Osman is an author, producer and television presenter. His first three novels, The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and The Bullet That Missed were multi-million-copy record-breaking bestsellers around the world. The Last Devil to Die is his fourth book. He lives in London with his wife, Ingrid, and their cat Liesl.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into fifty-five languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize. Her previous novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell’s Book of the Year. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to ‘the renewal of the art of storytelling.’

Simon Sinek is the bestselling author of Start with Why, Leaders Eat Last and Together is Better which have helped organizations around the world inspire their people to reach new heights. He has presented his ideas to Fortune 100 companies and small start-ups; to non-profit organizations and members of Congress; to foreign ambassadors and the highest levels of the US military, among many others. His TED talk based on Start with Why is the third most popular video of all time on TED.com, with more than 35 million views.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even ‘God’s own novelist’ (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works – novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews – are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Jonathan Stroud was born in Bedford in 1970. After studying English Literature at York University, he moved to London, where he worked as an editor at a publishing firm. He is the author of the best-selling Bartimaeus sequence, which is published in 35 languages and has sold 6 million copies worldwide; the much-beloved Lockwood & Co. series (soon to be a major Netflix series) as well as The Notorious Scarlett & Browne; Heroes of the Valley; The Last Seige; The Leap and Buried Fire. He lives in Hertfordshire with his family. He has yet to see a ghost, but is keeping his eyes open.

Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series (The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland) and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Jeff Kinney is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and the Awesome Friendly Kid series. He is a six-time Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award winner for Favorite Book and has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. He spent his childhood in the Washington, D.C., area and moved to New England, where he and his wife own a bookstore named An Unlikely Story.