153 articles
Ibn al-Nadim (ابن النديم)
Ibn al-Nadim (ابن النديم), d. 380/990 or 385/995, Baghdad bookseller and copyist, author of Kitab al-Fihrist (begun 377/987), the foundational ten-discourse Arabic bibliography covering scripts, Qur'an, grammar, poetry, law, philosophy, and sects.
Ilyasah Shabazz
Ilyasah Shabazz (born 1962), American author, educator, and activist; third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz; author of Growing Up X and X: A Novel (NAACP Image Award); adjunct professor at John Jay College and Shabazz Center board chair.
Jahanara Imam
Jahanara Imam (জাহানারা ইমাম, 1929–1994), honored as Shaheed Janani, was a Bengali writer and teacher whose day-by-day diary of the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war became an immediate bestseller.
James Bowen (author)
James Anthony Bowen (born 1979), English author of A Street Cat Named Bob; recovering heroin addict and busker whose 2007 rescue of stray cat Bob led to a memoir series sold over 8 million copies in 40-plus languages and two films.
Jan Chryzostom Pasek
Jan Chryzostom Pasek (c. 1636 – 1701) was a Polish soldier and memoirist whose vivid Memoirs depict seventeenth-century warfare and noble life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Jane Hawking
Jane Hawking, born Jane Wilde, English author and academic, first wife of physicist Stephen Hawking; married 1965, divorced 1995; wrote Music to Move the Stars (1999) and Travelling to Infinity (2007), basis of The Theory of Everything.
Jean Améry
Jean Améry (Hans Mayer, 1912–1978), Austrian essayist and Auschwitz survivor. Pen name anagram of Mayer; wrote At the Mind's Limits (1966), defending resentment and describing torture's lasting destruction of trust in the world.
Jean Guéhenno
Jean Guéhenno (1890–1978) was a French writer, teacher, and education inspector best remembered for Journal des années noires, his secret diary of the German occupation of France.
Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls (born 1960, Phoenix, Arizona) is an American author and journalist, former E! and New York magazine gossip columnist, best known for the bestselling memoir The Glass Castle (2005) and the novels Half Broke Horses, The Silver Star, and Hang the Moon.
Jennifer Worth
Jennifer Worth (1935-2011), born Jennifer Louise Lee, was a British nurse-midwife, musician, and writer whose Call the Midwife trilogy of memoirs of 1950s East End midwifery became UK bestsellers and inspired the BBC series.
Jillian Lauren
Jillian Lauren (Jillian Lauren Shriner), American author of the memoirs Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (2010) and Everything You Ever Wanted (2015), the novel Pretty, and Behold the Monster (2023) about serial killer Samuel Little; wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner.
Jimmy Keene
Jimmy Keene, or James Keene, is an American author and former drug dealer who went undercover in prison to elicit a confession from suspected serial killer Larry Hall.
John Bunyan
John Bunyan (1628–1688), English Nonconformist tinker-turned-preacher jailed twelve years in Bedford, wrote about sixty books including The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Grace Abounding (1666), and The Holy War (1682).
John Perkins (author)
John Perkins is an American author and critic who served as a chief economist from 1971 to 1981. His 2004 book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, details his work.
Karrine Steffans
Karrine Steffans, pen name of Elisabeth Ovesen (born 1978, St. Thomas), is a former hip-hop video dancer nicknamed Superhead whose 2005 New York Times bestselling memoir Confessions of a Video Vixen named celebrity lovers; she retired the pen name in 2015.
Krishna Hutheesing
Krishna Nehru Hutheesing (1907–1967), Indian writer, youngest sister of Jawaharlal Nehru and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit; independence activist, jail veteran, author of With No Regrets and We Nehrus.
Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo, 小泉八雲), 1850–1904, Greek-born writer of Irish-Greek parentage who worked as a journalist in Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Martinique, then settled in Japan, naturalized in 1896, and wrote Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan and Kwaidan.
Lara Love Hardin
Lara Love Hardin, American literary agent, ghostwriter, and author; founder of True Literary, ex-co-CEO of Idea Architects; wrote The Sun Does Shine and the memoir The Many Lives of Mama Love, a 2024 Oprah's Book Club pick.
Linda Lee Cadwell
Linda Lee Cadwell (Linda C. Emery, born 1945), American teacher and writer, widow of Bruce Lee; author of the 1975 memoir Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, consultant on Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and Bruce Lee Foundation co-founder.
Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), also Lisa Brennan, is an American memoirist, daughter of Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs; her debut memoir Small Fry (2018) was a NYT bestseller about her Silicon Valley childhood.
Llewelyn Davies boys
The Llewelyn Davies boys, George, Jack, Peter, Michael, and Nicholas, were the family whose friendship with J. M. Barrie inspired Peter Pan; orphaned in 1907 and 1910, they were raised under his guardianship.
Lynne Spears
Lynne Irene Spears (née Bridges), American teacher, day care operator, and author born 1955 in Mississippi; mother of Britney, Jamie Lynn, and Bryan Spears; coauthor of Heart to Heart and A Mother's Gift and author of the 2008 memoir Through the Storm.
Madame de Sévigné
Madame de Sévigné, born Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (1626–1696), was a French letter writer whose correspondence, chiefly to her daughter, chronicles Louis XIV's reign and remains in print since 1696.
Mahadev Desai
Mahadev Desai (મહાદેવ દેસાઈ, 1892–1942) was an Indian independence activist, journalist, and writer who served as Mahatma Gandhi's personal secretary from 1917 until his death.
Mahtob Mahmoody
Mahtob Mahmoody (born 1979), American author and daughter of Betty Mahmoody; held in Iran 1984-1986 with her mother, subject of Not Without My Daughter, author of My Name is Mahtob (2015).
Mao Xiang
Mao Xiang, courtesy name Pijiang (冒襄, 1611–1693), was a Chinese writer and Ming loyalist from Rugao, known for the elegiac memoir Yingmei An Yiyu for his concubine Dong Xiaowan.
Margaret Busby
Margaret Busby, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born British publisher who co-founded Allison & Busby in 1967, becoming Britain's youngest and first Black woman publisher.
Margaret Durrell
Margaret "Margo" Durrell (1919 or 1920 – 16 January 2007), later Margaret Duncan, sister of Lawrence, Leslie, and Gerald Durrell, ran a Bournemouth boarding house from 1947 and wrote the 1995 memoir Whatever Happened to Margo?.
Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic from Bishop's Lynn, Norfolk, whose dictated Book is the first known English autobiography.
Margot Asquith
Margot Asquith, née Tennant (1864–1945), Countess of Oxford and Asquith, British political hostess, diarist, and author; second wife of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, known for her candid two-volume autobiography (1920, 1922) and Great War diary.