153 articles
Roberto Saviano
Roberto Saviano (Naples, 1979), Italian writer and journalist, author of Gomorra (2006) on the Camorra, 10 million copies sold, adapted into Garrone's Cannes Grand Prix film and a Sky series; under police escort since 2006.
Robyn Davidson
Robyn Davidson (born 1950) is an Australian writer, author of Tracks (1980) about her 1977 camel trek across 1,700 miles of Australian desert, and Unfinished Woman (2023), a memoir of her mother's suicide.
Sally Burton
Sally Burton, born Sally Hay, is the British widow of actor Richard Burton; married him in Las Vegas in July 1983, inherited his $4.58 million estate, and donated his diaries to Swansea University. Distinct from the New Zealand painter of the same name.
Samson Occom
Samson Occom (1723–1792), Mohegan Presbyterian minister and fund-raiser for Dartmouth College, author of A Short Narrative of My Life and the Moses Paul execution sermon, and founder of the Brothertown Indian community.
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), English naval administrator, wrote the famous diary 1660–1669 in Shelton shorthand, recording the Restoration, plague, and Great Fire of London; first published 1825, complete 1970–83.
Sarah Winnemucca
Sarah Winnemucca, Paiute name Thocmetony, was a Northern Paiute author and interpreter whose 1883 book Life Among the Piutes was the first autobiography by a Native American woman.
Scarlett Curtis
Scarlett Curtis (born 1995), English writer, activist, and journalist; curator of Feminists Don't Wear Pink and co-founder of The Pink Protest, known for FGM and period poverty campaigns and TV writing.
Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shōnagon (清少納言) was a Japanese waka poet and court gentlewoman who served Empress Teishi in the mid-Heian period and wrote The Pillow Book, which established the zuihitsu essay genre.
Sergey Aksakov
Sergey Aksakov (Сергей Аксаков; 1791 to 1859) was a Russian writer and critic known for his autobiographical Family Chronicle trilogy, nature writing, and the fairy tale The Scarlet Flower.
Shelby Foote
Shelby Foote (Shelby Dade Foote, Jr., 1916–2005), Greenville, Mississippi novelist and historian, wrote the 1.5-million-word three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative (1958–1974) and became famous through Ken Burns's 1990 PBS documentary, in which he made 89 appearances.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee, born 1970 in New Delhi, is an Indian-American oncologist, Columbia University associate professor, and author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, plus The Gene and The Song of the Cell.
Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester, British-born journalist, geologist, and author of The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa, and Land; former Guardian and Sunday Times foreign correspondent, OBE 2006, living in New York.
Sophie Elmhirst
Sophie Elmhirst is a British journalist and author writing for the Guardian Long Read and The Economist. Winner of the 2020 Feature Writer of the Year award, her first book Maurice and Maralyn, also titled A Marriage at Sea, won the 2024 Nero Gold Prize.
Stephen Humphrey Bogart
Stephen Humphrey Bogart (born 1949), also Stephen Bogart, is the son of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, author of Bogart: In Search of My Father (1995) and the R.J. Brooks mysteries, a Court TV producer, and co-manager of his father's estate.
Steven Callahan
Steven Callahan (born 1952), American sailor and naval architect, survived 76 days adrift in the Atlantic in 1982 after his sloop Napoleon Solo sank; author of Adrift and Life of Pi consultant.
Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad, American Emmy-winning journalist and author of Between Two Kingdoms and The Book of Alchemy; wrote the NYT column Life, Interrupted during leukemia treatment diagnosed at 22, with 2022 recurrence, Isolation Journals newsletter, and the Oscar-nominated documentary American Symphony with husband Jon Batiste.
Susannah Cahalan
Susannah Cahalan, American journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire (2012), about her anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis; also The Great Pretender (2019) and The Acid Queen (2025).
Sylvain Tesson
Sylvain Tesson (born 1972, Paris) is a French travel writer and adventurer, son of journalist Philippe Tesson; Prix Médicis 2011 for Dans les forêts de Sibérie, Prix Renaudot 2019 for La Panthère des neiges, known for his 2015 walk across France after a near-fatal fall.
Tara Westover
Tara Westover (born 1986) is an American historian and memoirist, author of the 2018 memoir Educated about her survivalist Mormon Idaho childhood and Cambridge PhD; her second memoir, Brothers and Sisters, is due April 2027.
Tehmina Durrani
Tehmina Durrani (تہمینہ درانی), born 1953, Pakistani author, artist, and women's rights activist; wrote the bestselling banned autobiography My Feudal Lord (1991) about her marriage to Ghulam Mustafa Khar, later married Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and served as First Lady.
Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, born in Togo in 1941, is a Togolese writer and explorer known for L'Africain du Groenland, the prize-winning account of his sixteen months living among Greenland's Inuit.
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), English Romantic essayist, author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), the first autobiographical account of drug addiction; also wrote Recollections of the Lake Poets and Suspiria de Profundis.
Thomas Erikson
Thomas Erikson (born 1965) is a Swedish behaviourist and author of the Surrounded by series, led by Surrounded by Idiots (Omgiven av idioter, 2014), which sorts behavior into four DISC-based colors; over 12 million copies sold, widely criticized as pseudoscience.
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain (1893–1970), English feminist, pacifist, and author of the First World War memoir Testament of Youth (1933); Somerville College VAD nurse who lost her fiancé, brother, and two friends, and joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1937.
Vicente Pérez Rosales
Vicente Pérez Rosales (1807–1886) was a Chilean businessman, diplomat, and writer who organized the German colonization of the Llanquihue region and wrote the memoir Recuerdos del pasado.
Victoria Price
Victoria Price (born 1962, Santa Monica) is an American writer, designer, and speaker, daughter of actor Vincent Price and Mary Grant, and author of Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999).
Vyvyan Holland
Vyvyan Holland (Vyvyan Oscar Beresford Wilde, 1886-1967), second son of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd; name changed to Holland in 1895; writer, translator, author of Son of Oscar Wilde (1954).
Wang Dingjun
Wang Dingjun (王鼎钧, born April 1925) is a Chinese-language essayist from Linyi, Shandong, regarded as a leading figure of modern Chinese prose and a master of the memoir.
William Apess
William Apess (1798–1839) was a Pequot writer, activist, and Methodist minister who wrote the first known book-length autobiography by an Indigenous North American and led the Mashpee Wampanoag self-government campaign of the 1830s.
Xaviera Hollander
Xaviera Hollander, born Xaviera de Vries in 1943, is a Dutch former call girl and brothel owner known for her 1971 bestselling memoir The Happy Hooker.