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Leif GW Persson has chronicled the political and social development of modern Swedish society in his award-winning novels for more than three decades. Persson has served as an adviser to the Swedish Ministry of Justice and is Sweden’s most renowned psychological profiler. He is a professor at Sweden’s national police board and is considered the country’s foremost expert on crime. He lives in Stockholm.

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 Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of Nigerians in Space. His work has been featured in Vice, Slate, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, Guernica, The Millions, World Literature Today, ESPN, and elsewhere. After the Flare is the second novel in the Nigerians in Space series.

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 Grace Emily Ogot (nee Akinyi; 15 May 1930 - 18 March 2015) was a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat. Together with Charity Waciuma she was the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published. She was one of the first Kenyan members of parliament and she became an assistant minister. Ogot was born Grace Emily Akinyi to a Christian family on 15 May 1930 in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya - a village highly populated by the predominantly Christian Luo ethnic group. Her father, Joseph Nyanduga, was one of the first men in the village of Asembo to obtain a Western education. He converted early on to the Anglican Church, and taught at the Church Missionary Society's Ng'iya Girls' School. From her father, she learned the stories of the Old Testament and it was from her grandmother that Ogot learned the traditional folk tales of the area from which she would later draw inspiration. Ogot attended the Ng'iya Girls' School and Butere High School throughout her youth. From 1949 to 1953, she trained as a nurse at the Nursing Training Hospital in Uganda. She later worked in London, England, at St. Thomas Hospital for Mothers and Babies. She returned to the African nursing profession in 1958, working at Maseno Hospital, run by the Church Missionary Society in Kisumu County, Kenya. Following this, Ogot worked at Makerere University College in Student Health Services. In addition to her experience in healthcare, Ogot gained experience in multiple different areas, working for the BBC Overseas Service as a script-writer and announcer on the programme London Calling East and Central Africa, operating a prominent radio programme in the Luo language, working as an officer of community development in Kisumu County and as a public relations officer for the Air India Corporation of East Africa. In 1975, Ogot worked as a Kenyan delegate to the general assembly of the United Nations. Subsequently, in 1976, she became a member of the Kenyan delegation to UNESCO. That year, she chaired and helped found the Writers' Association of Kenya. In 1983 she became one of only a handful of women to serve as a member of parliament and the only woman assistant minister in the cabinet of then President Daniel arap Moi. In 1959, Grace Ogot married the professor and historian Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Luo from Gem Location, and later became the mother of four children. Her proclivity for storytelling and her husband's interest in the oral tradition and history of the Luo peoples would later be combined in her writing career. Ogot died on 18 March 2015. In 1962, Grace Ogot read her short story "A Year of Sacrifice" at a conference on African Literature at Makerere University in Uganda. After discovering that there was no other work presented or displayed from East African writers, Ogot became motivated to publish her works, which she subsequently did both in the Luo language and in English. "A Year of Sacrifice" appeared in print as Ogot's first published work in the African journal Black Orpheus in 1963. In 1964, her short story "The Rain Came" was published as part of the collection Modern African Stories, co-edited by Es'kia Mphahlele, who had organised the earlier mentioned conference on African Literature at Makerere University in Uganda in 1962. "The Rain Came" was a reworked version of "A Year of Sacrifice" but considerably shortened and with a different beginning and ending. Also in 1964, the short story "Ward Nine" was published in the journal Transition. Ogot's first novel The Promised Land, set in the 1930s, was published in 1966 and focused on Luo emigration and the problems that arise through migration. Her main protagonists emigrate from Nyanza to northern Tanzania, in search of fertile land and wealth. The story also focused on themes of tribal hatred, materialism, and traditional notions of femininity and wifely duties. 1968 saw the publishing of Land Without Thunder, a collection of short stories set in ancient Luoland. Ogot's descriptions, literary tools, and storylines in Land Without Thunder offer a valuable insight into Luo culture in pre-colonial East Africa. Her other works include The Strange Bride, The Graduate, The Other Woman and The Island of Tears. Many of her stories are set against the scenic background of Lake Victoria and the traditions of the Luo people. One theme that features prominently within Ogot's work is the importance of traditional Luo folklore, mythologies, and oral traditions. This theme is at the forefront in "The Rain Came", a tale that was related to Ogot in her youth by her grandmother, whereby a chief's daughter must be sacrificed to bring rain. Furthermore, Ogot's short stories juxtapose traditional and modern themes and notions, demonstrating the conflicts and convergences that exist between the old ways of thought and the new. In The Promised Land, the main character, Ochola, falls under a mysterious illness which cannot be cured through medical intervention. Eventually, he turns to a medicine man to be healed. Ogot explains such thought processes as exemplary of the blending of traditional and modern understandings, "Many of the stories I have told are based on day-to-day life… And in the final analysis, when the Church fails and the hospital fails, these people will always slip into something they trust, something within their own cultural background. It may appear to us mere superstition, but those who do believe in it do get healed. In day-to-day life in some communities in Kenya, both the modern and the traditional cures coexist." Another theme that often appears throughout Ogot's works is that of womanhood and the female role. Throughout her stories, Ogot demonstrates an interest in family matters, revealing both traditional and modern female gender roles followed by women, especially within the context of marriage and Christian traditions. Such an emphasis can be seen in The Promised Land, in which the notions both of mothers as the ultimate protectors of their children and of dominant patriarchal husband-wife relationships feature heavily. Critics such as Maryse CondE have suggested that Ogot's emphasis on the importance of the female marital role, as well as her portrayal of women in traditional roles, creates an overwhelmingly patriarchal tone in her stories. However, others have suggested that women in Ogot's works also demonstrate strength and integrity, as in "The Empty Basket", where the bravery of the main female character, Aloo, is contrasted by the failings of the male characters. Though her wits and self-assertion, Aloo overcomes a perilous situation with a snake, while the men are stricken by panic. It is only after she rebukes and shames the men that they are roused to destroy the snake. In Ogot's short stories, the women portrayed often have a strong sense of duty, as demonstrated in "The Rain Came", and her works regularly emphasise the need for understanding in relationships between men and women. Prior to Kenyan Independence, while Kenya was still under a colonial regime, Ogot experienced difficulties in her initial attempts to have her stories published: "I remember taking some of my short stories to the manager [of the East African Literature Bureau], including the one which was later published in Black Orpheus. They really couldn't understand how a Christian woman could write such stories, involved with sacrifices, traditional medicines and all, instead of writing about Salvation and Christianity. Thus, quite a few writers received no encouragement from colonial publishers who were perhaps afraid of turning out radical writers critical of the colonial regime." Grace Emily Ogot (nee Akinyi; 15 May 1930 - 18 March 2015) was a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat. Together with Charity Waciuma she was the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published. She was one of the first Kenyan members of parliament and she became an assistant minister. Ogot was born Grace Emily Akinyi to a Christian family on 15 May 1930 in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya - a village highly populated by the predominantly Christian Luo ethnic group. Her father, Joseph Nyanduga, was one of the first men in the village of Asembo to obtain a Western education. He converted early on to the Anglican Church, and taught at the Church Missionary Society's Ng'iya Girls' School. From her father, she learned the stories of the Old Testament and it was from her grandmother that Ogot learned the traditional folk tales of the area from which she would later draw inspiration. Ogot attended the Ng'iya Girls' School and Butere High School throughout her youth. From 1949 to 1953, she trained as a nurse at the Nursing Training Hospital in Uganda. She later worked in London, England, at St. Thomas Hospital for Mothers and Babies. She returned to the African nursing profession in 1958, working at Maseno Hospital, run by the Church Missionary Society in Kisumu County, Kenya. Following this, Ogot worked at Makerere University College in Student Health Services. In addition to her experience in healthcare, Ogot gained experience in multiple different areas, working for the BBC Overseas Service as a script-writer and announcer on the programme London Calling East and Central Africa, operating a prominent radio programme in the Luo language, working as an officer of community development in Kisumu County and as a public relations officer for the Air India Corporation of East Africa. In 1975, Ogot worked as a Kenyan delegate to the general assembly of the United Nations. Subsequently, in 1976, she became a member of the Kenyan delegation to UNESCO. That year, she chaired and helped found the Writers' Association of Kenya. In 1983 she became one of only a handful of women to serve as a member of parliament and the only woman assistant minister in the cabinet of then President Daniel arap Moi. In 1959, Grace Ogot married the professor and historian Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Luo from Gem Location, and later became the mother of four children. Her proclivity for storytelling and her husband's interest in the oral tradition and history of the Luo peoples would later be combined in her writing career. Ogot died on 18 March 2015. In 1962, Grace Ogot read her short story "A Year of Sacrifice" at a conference on African Literature at Makerere University in Uganda. After discovering that there was no other work presented or displayed from East African writers, Ogot became motivated to publish her works, which she subsequently did both in the Luo language and in English. "A Year of Sacrifice" appeared in print as Ogot's first published work in the African journal Black Orpheus in 1963. In 1964, her short story "The Rain Came" was published as part of the collection Modern African Stories, co-edited by Es'kia Mphahlele, who had organised the earlier mentioned conference on African Literature at Makerere University in Uganda in 1962. "The Rain Came" was a reworked version of "A Year of Sacrifice" but considerably shortened and with a different beginning and ending. Also in 1964, the short story "Ward Nine" was published in the journal Transition. Ogot's first novel The Promised Land, set in the 1930s, was published in 1966 and focused on Luo emigration and the problems that arise through migration. Her main protagonists emigrate from Nyanza to northern Tanzania, in search of fertile land and wealth. The story also focused on themes of tribal hatred, materialism, and traditional notions of femininity and wifely duties. 1968 saw the publishing of Land Without Thunder, a collection of short stories set in ancient Luoland. Ogot's descriptions, literary tools, and storylines in Land Without Thunder offer a valuable insight into Luo culture in pre-colonial East Africa. Her other works include The Strange Bride, The Graduate, The Other Woman and The Island of Tears. Many of her stories are set against the scenic background of Lake Victoria and the traditions of the Luo people. One theme that features prominently within Ogot's work is the importance of traditional Luo folklore, mythologies, and oral traditions. This theme is at the forefront in "The Rain Came", a tale that was related to Ogot in her youth by her grandmother, whereby a chief's daughter must be sacrificed to bring rain. Furthermore, Ogot's short stories juxtapose traditional and modern themes and notions, demonstrating the conflicts and convergences that exist between the old ways of thought and the new. In The Promised Land, the main character, Ochola, falls under a mysterious illness which cannot be cured through medical intervention. Eventually, he turns to a medicine man to be healed. Ogot explains such thought processes as exemplary of the blending of traditional and modern understandings, "Many of the stories I have told are based on day-to-day life… And in the final analysis, when the Church fails and the hospital fails, these people will always slip into something they trust, something within their own cultural background. It may appear to us mere superstition, but those who do believe in it do get healed. In day-to-day life in some communities in Kenya, both the modern and the traditional cures coexist." Another theme that often appears throughout Ogot's works is that of womanhood and the female role. Throughout her stories, Ogot demonstrates an interest in family matters, revealing both traditional and modern female gender roles followed by women, especially within the context of marriage and Christian traditions. Such an emphasis can be seen in The Promised Land, in which the notions both of mothers as the ultimate protectors of their children and of dominant patriarchal husband-wife relationships feature heavily. Critics such as Maryse CondE have suggested that Ogot's emphasis on the importance of the female marital role, as well as her portrayal of women in traditional roles, creates an overwhelmingly patriarchal tone in her stories. However, others have suggested that women in Ogot's works also demonstrate strength and integrity, as in "The Empty Basket", where the bravery of the main female character, Aloo, is contrasted by the failings of the male characters. Though her wits and self-assertion, Aloo overcomes a perilous situation with a snake, while the men are stricken by panic. It is only after she rebukes and shames the men that they are roused to destroy the snake. In Ogot's short stories, the women portrayed often have a strong sense of duty, as demonstrated in "The Rain Came", and her works regularly emphasise the need for understanding in relationships between men and women. Prior to Kenyan Independence, while Kenya was still under a colonial regime, Ogot experienced difficulties in her initial attempts to have her stories published: "I remember taking some of my short stories to the manager [of the East African Literature Bureau], including the one which was later published in Black Orpheus. They really couldn't understand how a Christian woman could write such stories, involved with sacrifices, traditional medicines and all, instead of writing about Salvation and Christianity. Thus, quite a few writers received no encouragement from colonial publishers who were perhaps afraid of turning out radical writers critical of the colonial regime." She was interviewed in 1974 by Lee Nichols for a Voice of America radio broadcast that was aired between 1975 and 1979 (Voice of America radio series Conversations with African Writers, no. 23). The Library of Congress has a copy of the broadcast tape and the unedited original interview. The broadcast transcript appears in the 1981 book Conversations with African Writers. Three novels by her were posthumously published, launched by her husband in 2018.

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 Wangari Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 - 25 September 2011) was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica (Benedictine College) and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. She made numerous achievements, was affiliated to many professional bodies and received several awards. In 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.

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 Lily Mabura has pursued a transnational literary and scholarly career in countries such as Kenya, the USA, and the UAE. Mabura has degrees from the University of Nairobi, the University of Idaho (MFA in Creative Writing – Fiction), and the University of Missouri-Columbia (PhD English – Creative Writing & Africana Studies). Her literary awards include the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature; Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award; and the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award. Her short story "How Shall We Kill the Bishop?" was shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing. Mabura’s publications include a first novel titled The Pretoria Conspiracy and four children’s books: Oma, Saleh Kanta and the Cavaliers, Seth the Silly Gorilla, and Ali the Little Sultan. Her latest book is a collection of short stories titled How Shall We Kill the Bishop and Other Stories (African Writers Series, Heinemann-Pearson, 2012). With John Mugubi, she co-edited The Warm Heart of Africa and Other Stories (KICD 2017 Edition, Longhorn Publishers - Kenya). Short fiction by Mabura has appeared in PRISM international, Wasafiri, Callaloo, the 2007 Fish Anthology, Love on the Road 2015 anthology, and Antología: Escritores africanos contemporáneos (Editorial Empatía, Argentina, 2018). Her scholarly work has appeared in various international journals, including Research in African Literatures.

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Wanjiku wa Ngugi is a writer and director of the Helsinki African Film Festival (HAFF) in Finland. She is also a member of the editorial board of Matatu: Journal for African Literature and Culture and Society, and was a columnist for the Finnish development magazine Maailman Kuvalehti, writing about political and cultural issues. She has also been a jury member of the CinemAfrica Film Festival, Sweden, in 2012 & 2013. Wanjiku wa Ngugi is a writer and director of the Helsinki African Film Festival (HAFF) in Finland. She is also a member of the editorial board of Matatu: Journal for African Literature and Culture and Society, and was a columnist for the Finnish development magazine Maailman Kuvalehti, writing about political and cultural issues. She has also been a jury member of the CinemAfrica Film Festival, Sweden, in 2012 & 2013. Her work has been published in The Herald (Zimbabwe), The Daily Nation, Business Daily, The East African (Kenya), Pambazuka News, Chimurenga, and The New Black Magazine among others.

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Linda Ty Casper (born (Malabon, 1931) is a Filipino writer who has published over fifteen books, including the historical novel Dream Eden and the political novels Awaiting Trespass, Wings of Stone, A Small Party in a Garden, and Fortress in the Plaza. She has also published three collections of short stories which present a cross-section of Filipino society. In 1992, Tides and Near Occasions of Love won the Philippine PEN short story prize; another at the UNESCO International Writers' Day, London; and the SEAWrite Award in Bangkok 'Triptych for a Ruined Altar' was in the Roll of Honor of The Best American Short Stories, 1977. Her novel Awaiting Trespass which is about the politically sensitive theme of torture by the Marcos regime was published by Readers International of London.

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Jose Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (1861–1896), was a Filipino nationalist, writer and reformist. He is widely considered the greatest national hero of the Philippines. He was the author of Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo and a number of poems and essays. He was executed on December 30, 1896 by the then colonial government as a revolutionary.

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Ninotchka Rosca (born in the Philippines in 1946) is a Filipina feminist, author, journalist and human rights activist who is active in AF3IRM, the Mariposa Center for Change, Sisterhood is Global and the initiating committee of the MARIPOSA ALLIANCE (Ma-Al), a multi-racial, multi-ethnic women's activist center for understanding the intersectionality of class, race and gender oppressions, toward a more comprehensive practice of women's liberation. As a novelist, Rosca was a recipient of the American Book Award in 1993 for her novel Twice Blessed. Rosca has two novels, two short story collections and four non-fiction books. Her novel ‘State of War' is considered a classic account of ordinary people's lives under a dictatorship. She is a classic short story writer. Her story ‘Epidemic' was included in the 1986 ‘100 Short Stories in the United States by Raymond Carver and in the Missouri Review collection of their Best Published Stories in 25 Years, while ‘Sugar & Salt' was included in the Ms Magazines Best Fiction in 30 Years. She is also the author of the best-selling English language novels State of War and Twice Blessed. The latter won her the 1993 American Book Award for excellence in literature. Her most recent book is JMS: At Home In The World, co-written with the controversial Jose Maria Sison, who has been included in the U.S. list of ‘terrorists'. Rosca was a political prisoner under the dictatorial government of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. She was forced into exile to Hawaii, United States when threatened with a second arrest for her human rights activism by the Marcos regime. Rosca was designated as one of the 12 Asian-American Women of Hope by the Bread and Roses Cultural Project. These women were chosen by scholars and community leaders for their courage, compassion and commitment in helping to shape society. They are considered role models for young people of color, who, in the words of Gloria Steinem, ‘have been denied the knowledge that greatness looks like them.' Rosca has worked with Amnesty International and the PEN American Center. Rosca was also a founder and the first national chair of the GABNet, the largest and only US-Philippines women's solidarity mass organization, which has evolved into AF3IRM. She is the international spokesperson of GABNet's Purple Rose Campaign against the trafficking of women, with an emphasis on Filipinas. She attended the University of the Philippines and lives in Queens borough of New York City. Her lecture schedules are managed by Speak Out Now. A huge fan of science fiction, Rosca reads four books a week (three ‘light,' one ‘heavy'). She was at the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women which took place in Beijing, China, and at the UN's World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria. At the latter, she drafted the Survivors Statement, signed by four Nobel Prize winners and hundreds of former prisoners of conscience. This statement first applied the phrase ‘modern day slavery' to the traffic of women. It was in Vienna as well where the slogan ‘women's rights are human rights' gained international prominence; Rosca had brought it from the Philippine women's movement and helped launch it internationally. Rosca was press secretary of the The Hague International Women's Tribunal on Japan's WWII Military Sex Slavery which convicted Japan's wartime era leadership for creating and using the Comfort Women. Rosca is particularly concerned with the origins of women's oppression and the interface between class, race and gender exploitation, so that women can move toward greater theory building and practice of a comprehensive genuine women's liberation. She often speaks on such issues as sex tourism, trafficking, the mail-order bride industry, and violence against women, and the labor export component of globalization under imperialism. Rosca's Canadian fans call her ‘The First Lady of Philippine Literature.' She is currently a correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the most widely-read broadsheet in the Philippines.

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Francisco Sionil José (December 3, 1924 – January 6, 2022) was a Filipino writer who was one of the most widely read in the English language. A National Artist of the Philippines for Literature, which was bestowed upon him in 2001, José's novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society. His works—written in English—have been translated into 28 languages, including Korean, Indonesian, Czech, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Dutch. He was often considered the leading Filipino candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. José was born in Rosales, Pangasinan, the setting of many of his stories. He spent his childhood in Barrio Cabugawan, Rosales, where he first began to write. José is of Ilocano descent whose family had migrated to Pangasinan prior to his birth. Fleeing poverty, his forefathers traveled from Ilocos towards Cagayan Valley through the Santa Fe Trail. Like many migrant families, they brought their lifetime possessions with them, including uprooted molave posts of their old houses and their alsong, a stone mortar for pounding rice. One of the greatest influences to José was his industrious mother who went out of her way to get him the books he loved to read, while making sure her family did not go hungry despite poverty and landlessness. José started writing in grade school, at the time he started reading. In the fifth grade, one of José's teachers opened the school library to her students, which is how José managed to read the novels of José Rizal, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Faulkner and Steinbeck. Reading about Basilio and Crispin in Rizal's Noli Me Tangere made the young José cry, because injustice was not an alien thing to him. When José was five years old, his grandfather who was a soldier during the Philippine revolution, had once tearfully showed him the land their family had once tilled but was taken away by rich mestizo landlords who knew how to work the system against illiterates like his grandfather. José attended the University of Santo Tomas after World War II, but dropped out and plunged into writing and journalism in Manila. In subsequent years, he edited various literary and journalistic publications, started a publishing house, and founded the Philippine branch of PEN, an international organization for writers. José received numerous awards for his work. The Pretenders is his most popular novel, which is the story of one man's alienation from his poor background and the decadence of his wife's wealthy family. José Rizal's life and writings profoundly influenced José's work. The five volume Rosales Saga, in particular, employs and integrates themes and characters from Rizal's work. Throughout his career, José's writings espouse social justice and change to better the lives of average Filipino families. He is one of the most critically acclaimed Filipino authors internationally, although much underrated in his own country because of his authentic Filipino English and his anti-elite views. "Authors like myself choose the city as a setting for their fiction because the city itself illustrates the progress or the sophistication that a particular country has achieved. Or, on the other hand, it might also reflect the kind of decay, both social and perhaps moral, that has come upon a particular people." — F. Sionil José, BBC.com, 30 July 2003. José also owned Solidaridad Bookshop, located on Padre Faura Street in Ermita, Manila. The bookshop offers mostly hard-to-find books and Filipiniana reading materials previously curated by his wife, Teresita, and foreign selections previously curated by himself. It is said to be one of the favorite haunts of many local writers. In his regular column, Hindsight, in The Philippine STAR, dated September 12, 2011, he wrote "Why we are shallow", blaming the decline of Filipino intellectual and cultural standards on a variety of modern amenities, including media, the education system—particularly the loss of emphasis on classic literature and the study of Greek and Latin—and the abundance and immediacy of information on the Internet. Nominated on numerous occasions for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy possesses 39 copies of Sionil José's works in English and French translations. José died on the night of January 6, 2022, aged 97, at the Makati Medical Center, where he was scheduled for an angioplasty the next day.

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Sir Walter Scott (15 August 1771 - 21 September 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet. Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. Although primarily remembered for his extensive literary works and his political engagement, Scott was an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, and throughout his career combined his writing and editing work with his daily occupation as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. A prominent member of the Tory establishment in Edinburgh, Scott was an active member of the Highland Society and served a long term as President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–32).

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 Tobias George Smollett (19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens. George Orwell admired Smollett very much. His novels were amended liberally by printers; a definitive edition of each of his works was edited by Dr. O. M. Brack, Jr. to correct variants.

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Robert Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796) (also known as Robbie Burns, Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as The Bard) was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest. He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV. As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) 'Auld Lang Syne' is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and 'Scots Wha Hae' served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world today include 'A Red, Red Rose'; 'A Man's a Man for A' That'; 'To a Louse'; 'To a Mouse'; 'The Battle of Sherramuir'; 'Tam o' Shanter'; and 'Ae Fond Kiss'.

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James Boswell (29 October 1740 – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. A great mass of Boswell's diaries, letters, and private papers were recovered from the 1920s to the 1950s, and their publication by Yale University has transformed his reputation.

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Alicia Borinsky, born in Buenos Aires, is a novelist, poet and literary critic. Alicia Borinsky is professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. Her critical work has helped frame the discussion about the writers of the ‘boom' movement in Latin America. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernández, Borges's master, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature.

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Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University.

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