ANDRÉ ACIMAN is the New York Times best-selling author of Call Me by Your Name, Find Me, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, and Enigma Variations. His memoir, Out of Egypt, is an evocative description of the lost world of his childhood as part of the Sephardic Jewish community in Alexandria. He recently wrote an introduction to the Penguin Classics’ edition of Olivia by Dorothy Strachey and is the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
ANNE APPLEBAUM is the author of Gulag: A History, which won the Pulitzer Prize, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which won the Cundill Prize, and Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, which won the Lionel Gelber and Duff Cooper prizes. She is a columnist for The Atlantic and a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Anne divides her time between Britain, Poland, and the United States.
PAUL ADAMSON is chairman of Forum Europe and Forum Global, publisher of the online magazine Encompass, and founder of the EU-UK Forum. He is a member of the Centre for European Reform’s advisory board and Rand Europe's Council of Advisors. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, and Senior Adviser at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative. In 2012, Paul was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to promoting understanding of the European Union,” and in 2016 he was made a Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite by the French government.
BRIT BENNETT was born and raised in Southern California, graduated from Stanford University, and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan. There, she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book Foundation’s 2016 5 Under 35 honorees. Both her novels, The Mothers and The Vanishing Half, published this year, have been New York Times best sellers. The Vanishing Half is being made into a film.
SARAH CHURCHWELL is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she is director of the UK’s national festival of the humanities, the Being Human Festival. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, and most recently, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream. She has written for many journals in the US and UK and comments regularly on arts, culture and politics for television, radio and film. She was named by Prospect magazine as one of the world’s Top Fifty Thinkers in 2019.
SARA COLLINS studied law at the London School of Economics before qualifying as a barrister in 1994. She worked as a lawyer for seventeen years before obtaining a Master’s degree in creative writing with distinction from Cambridge University in 2016. Her debut novel, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, which blends her legal background with her interest in gothic writing, was the winner of the prestigious Costa First Novel Award in the UK. It has been sold for translation into more than fourteen languages. Oprah Magazine named her one of the women of summer in 2019.
BERNARD CORNWELL was born in London. He worked in television in the UK but has devoted his time to writing since moving to America, where he has spent the majority of his life. He is most well known for his Sharpe series of historical novels, the 13th of which, War Lords, is being published this autumn. His one-off novel, Fools and Mortals, published in 2017, is a fictionalized account of the rivalrous relationship between Shakespeare and his younger brother.
KIRK CURNUTT is executive director of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and serves as managing editor of The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. He is professor and chair of English at Troy University. His office in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, looks out toward Pleasant Avenue, where Zelda Fitzgerald was raised. Curnutt is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald, among other books, and the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s collections of short fiction and The Oxford Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
SIR KIM DARROCH’S diplomatic career spanned over 40 years, primarily focusing on national security and European policy. His roles included Principal Advisor on European Affairs to Tony Blair, Permanent Representative to the European Union, and National Security Adviser to David Cameron. He served as British Ambassador to the United States from January 2016 to December 2019. He is now a life peer in the House of Lords and lives in London.
MONTY DON is the UK’s leading garden writer and broadcaster. He has been chief presenter of the BBC’s Gardener’s World since 2003 and since 2011 the program has come from his own garden, Longmeadow, on the English-Welsh border. His books include the Sunday Times best seller Nigel (a tribute to his former beloved canine companion), The Jewel Garden, Paradise Gardens and Japanese Gardens. His latest books are My Garden World and American Gardens. He has also made many acclaimed TV programs, including a recent series on American gardens, some of which was shot in Charleston.
EMMA DONOGHUE was born in Dublin and now lives in Ontario, Canada. Her novels range from the historical (The Wonder, Slammerkin, Life Mask, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Akin, Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Her international best seller Room, adapted for film, was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Booker, Commonwealth, and Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her current book is The Pull of the Stars.
RICHARD FORD is the author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day, for which he won both the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and the PEN/William Faulkner Award. He is also a winner of the 2019 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and the Carnegie Gold Medal. He is the author of the New York Times best seller Canada and short story collections Let Me Be Frank with You, Rock Springs, and A Multitude of Sins. He was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lives in Maine. Richard Ford is Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
PETINA GAPPAH is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. Her debut story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, won The Guardian First Book Award in 2009, and her first novel, The Book of Memory, was long-listed for the 2015 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. Her current novel is Out of Darkness, Shining Light.
BILL GOLDSTEIN is editor of The New York Times books website and book critic for the weekend edition of WNBC’s Today in New York and author of The World Broke in Two. He is currently writing the authorized biography of the recently deceased playwright and gay activist, Larry Kramer.
GEOFFREY HARPHAM is a senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and former director of the National Humanities Center. He is the author of ten books, including most recently The Humanities and the Dream of America, What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez?, and Scholarship and Freedom.
MARK HONIGSBAUM is a medical historian, journalist, and author of five books including The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris and The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria. He hosts the podcast series Going Viral: The Mother of all Pandemics, marking the centenary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. His TED-ED animation, “How Pandemics Spread,” has been viewed more than 2.75 million times. He is a former chief reporter of The Observer and holds a PhD in medical history. He is currently a lecturer at City University, London.
MARY KALDOR is a Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the London School of Economics Department of International Development. Professor Kaldor also directs the unit’s largest research project, the Conflict Research Programme. She is highly regarded for her innovative work on democratization, conflict, and globalization.
KWAME KWEI-ARMAH is a British actor, playwright, director, singer, and broadcaster. In 2018 he was made Artistic Director of the Young Vic Theatre in London, where he has directed Twelfth Night and Tree. From 2011 to 2018 he was the Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage where his directing credits include: Jazz, Marley, One Night in Miami,, Amadeus, and Dance of the Holy Ghosts. As a playwright, his credits include Tree (Manchester International Festival, Young Vic), One Love (Birmingham Repertory Theatre), Beneatha’s Place (Baltimore Center Stage) Elmina’s Kitchen, Fix Up, Statement of Regret (National Theatre, London), Let There Be Love, and Seize the Day (Tricycle Theatre, London).
REGINA MARLER writes for the New York Review of Books and elsewhere. She is the author of Bloomsbury Pie: The Making of the Bloomsbury Boom and Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America on to Sex. While still a graduate student, she was chosen by the estate of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell to edit Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell. Her fiction and essays have appeared in various publications and journals. She lives in San Francisco.
JOHN MULLAN is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has published extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. He is also a prolific broadcaster and journalist and writes about contemporary fiction for the Guardian. In 2009 he was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent book is What Matters in Jane Austen? He has lectured widely on both Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in the UK and the US.
SANDRA NEWMAN is the author of the novels The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done (short-listed for The Guardian First Book Award), Cake, and The Country of Ice Cream Star (long-listed for the Women's Literature Prize in the UK). She co-authored the hugely successful How Not to Write a Novel and has also written The Western Lit Survival Kit, Read This Next, and a memoir, Changeling. She lives in New York.
MAGGIE O’FARRELL is the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 for her best-selling novel, Hamnet. One of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prizes, it has been awarded for the past 25 years to a female author of any nationality for the best novel written in English and published in the UK in the preceding year. She is also the author of the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, and eight other award-winning novels, including The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine, Instructions For A Heatwave, and This Must Be The Place. She lives in Edinburgh.
JENNY OFFILL’S Dept. of Speculation was short-listed for the Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, selected as a book of the year over 20 times in the UK in outlets including The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Observer, and Vogue, and has been optioned for a feature film by Animal Kingdom. Jenny is also the author of Last Things and four books for children. She lives in New York with her family. Her current novel, Weather, has been short-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020.
BARONESS REBUCK DBE is a Director of Penguin Random House and sits on the Bertelsmann Media Group’s Management Committee. Gail was Chair and CEO of Random House UK, 1991-2013, becoming Chair in 2013. She was also a Non-Executive Director, BskyB, 2002-2012. Gail launched the charities World Book Day, Quick Reads, and, more recently, Books Are My Bag. As well as Penguin Random House, Gail is currently Senior Independent Director at the Guardian Media Group and Pro-Chancellor of the Royal College of Art. She was appointed to the House of Lords in September 2014.
SUSAN RICE was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Stanford University and the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the School of International Service at American University, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She held high office in both the Clinton and Obama administrations: she was one of the youngest Assistant Secretaries of African Affairs in the State Department under President Clinton and was amongst Obama’s most trusted advisors, serving as US Ambassador to the UN and National Security Advisor.
Sir Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and a Contributing Editor of the Financial Times. He is the author of nineteen books and writer-presenter of fifty documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC2. His books, documentaries and films have won multiple awards. His most recent work includes The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, published in 2015, and the second volume Belonging in 2017. In 2018, Civilizations, a nine-part BBC television series on world art and culture, of which he wrote and presented five sessions, was broadcast to great in acclaim. In May 2019, Wordy. Sounding off on high art, low appetite and the power of memory, was published. His latest television series, The Romantics and Us, was aired on the BBC this Autumn.
ELIF SHAFAK is an award-winning British-Turkish writer, storyteller, essayist, academic, public speaker, and activist. She writes in both Turkish and English and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into 50 languages. Her latest novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. A passionate advocate of freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public intellectual and twice TED Global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation.
ROBERT SKIDELSKY is emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of many books, most notably a three-volume multi-award winning biography of John Maynard Keynes. Created a life peer in 1991 as Baron Skidelsky of Tilton, he sits in the House of Lords on the Cross Benches (i.e. not attached to any political party). Tilton is the former home of John Maynard Keynes, just a stroll across a field from Charleston in the UK, with which this Festival is affiliated. Robert Skidelsky’s two most recent books are Money and Government and What’s Wrong with Economics?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001), he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is the author of numerous books and several best sellers. His most recent titles are People, Power, and Profits, Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy, Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited, The Euro, and Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy.
SUE STUART-SMITH is a prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She worked in the National Health Service for many years, becoming the lead clinician in psychotherapy in Hertfordshire, an English county close to London. She currently teaches at The Tavistock Clinic in London, the most well-known psychotherapeutic center in the UK. She is married to Tom Stuart-Smith, the celebrated garden designer, and, over 30 years together, they have created the wonderful Barn Garden in Hertfordshire. The Well-Gardened Mind is her first book.
JIA TOLENTINO is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She grew up in Texas, attended the University of Virginia, and served in Kyrgyzstan in the Peace Corps. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. She was a contributing editor at The Hairpin and the deputy editor at Jezebel. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Grantland, Slate, Pitchfork, Bon Appétit, Spin, and Fader. Trick Mirror is her first book. She lives in Brooklyn.
CLAIRE TOMALIN is a former Literary Editor of the British journal New Statesman and the Sunday Times newspaper. She has written seven highly acclaimed literary biographies, including Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the international best seller Charles Dickens. She followed this with the revelatory The Invisible Woman, the story of Dickens’ mysterious mistress, and her own candid autobiography, A Life of My Own.
SHEENA WAGSTAFF is the Metropolitan Museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art and leads The Met’s work in this field. In parallel, she has initiated and led the extensive international exhibition program at The Met Breuer (2016-2020), a new series of exhibitions and artist commissions at The Metropolitan Museum, as well as curating shows personally. Before joining The Met, she was Chief Curator of Tate Modern for 11 years. Over the course of her career, she has worked at other important cultural institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and the Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh. She has written and edited many publications and lectures widely.
RICHARD WOLFFE is a best-selling author, journalist, and a digital media and marketing executive. He currently writes a weekly column for The Guardian, focusing on U.S. politics. His latest book is We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time. It was published in September 2018 and became an instant New York Times best seller. An MSNBC political analyst for a decade, Wolffe was Vice-President and Executive Editor of MSNBC.com until 2015, when he joined Global Citizen as Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Digital Officer.
CARL ZIMMER writes the “Matter” column for The New York Times and has frequently contributed to The Atlantic, National Geographic, Time, and Scientific American, among other journals. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Journalism Award three times, together with a host of other awards and fellowships. He teaches science writing at Yale University. His books include A Planet of Viruses, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, Parasite Rex, Evolution, and Microcosm.