Just before I reached puberty, my Maltese father told me, “A woman is like a cow, always with one eye opened and one eye closed.” And I wondered if he’d meant only my mother. Just before my wedding day, my father told me what he’d meant: “A woman always pretends she can’t see anything, but …
"I like the mental puzzle involved with dealing with a real situation rather than one that you can just arbitrarily choose to change. And frankly I like the social mission of writing non-fiction."
The second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship, John Edgar Wideman is the author of 11 novels, including most recently Two Cities. He has also written four short-story collections and is a widely published essayist and social critic.
John Waters has made 15 films, including Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom, Pecker, and most recently, Cecil B. DeMented. He has also done some acting. Learn more about filmmaker John Waters by visiting the Internet Movie Database and his faculty page at the European Graduate School.
Studs Terkel authored over two dozen books, including: Hard Times, Working, RACE, The Good War (which won a Pulitzer), Coming of Age, My American Century, and The Great Divide.
Robert Stone has written five novels, including National Book Award winner Dog Soldiers.
Columbia University history professor Simon Schama's books include The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Cultures in the Golden Age (1987); Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989); Dead Certainties (1991); Landscape and Memory (1995); and Rembrandt's Eyes (1999). He has also been an art critic for New Yorker Magazine.
Film auteur John Sayles has written 26 films, half of which he also directed. His films include Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, and, most recently, Limbo. He has also acted in over 20 movies. For more on Sayles and his films, visit the Internet Movie Database.
Richard Price is both a novelist and a screenwriter.
Micheal Ondaatje wrote The English Patient, which won a Booker Prize and was adapted into an Academy-award-winning film in 1996.
