Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928) is an American autobiographer  and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton.

She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences.

Xu Xnrán (pen name Xinran) is a British-Chinese journalist and broadcaster, born in Beijing in 1958.

In the late 1980s, she began working for Chinese Radio and went on to become one of China's most successful journalists.

In 1997 she moved to London, where she initially worked as cleaner.

Edith Wharton, born Edith Newbold Jones (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.

Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander. She had two brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward.

Katherine Dunn is a best-selling novelist, journalist, voice artist, radio personality, book reviewer, and poet from Portland, Oregon.

Dunn was born in Garden City, Kansas on October 24, 1945. She went to high school in Tigard, Oregon, and later attended Reed College in Portland.

Anita Brookner CBE (born 16 July 1928) is an English novelist and art historian who was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.

Brookner's father, Newson Bruckner, was a Polish immigrant, and her mother, Maude Schiska, was a singer whose father had emigrated from Poland and founded a tobacco factory.