Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002). She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.

The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and raised in the nearby town of Grenada. At age five, she wrote her first poem, and she was first published in a Mississippi literary review when she was 13.

Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted Tartt into his graduate short story course. Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, meeting then-students Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt.

Tartt began writing her first novel, originally titled "The God of Illusions" and later published as The Secret History, during her second year at Bennington. She graduated from Bennington in 1986. After Ellis recommended her work to literary agent Amanda Urban, The Secret History was published in 1992, and sold out its original print-run of 75,000 copies, becoming a bestseller. It has been translated into 24 languages.

Kirsteen Anne Wark (born 3 February 1955) is a British journalist and television presenter, best known for fronting the BBC Two's news and current affairs programme Newsnight since 1993, and its weekly arts annexe Newsnight Review, now relaunched as "The Review Show".

Wark was born in Dumfries to Jimmy Wark, a solicitor, and Roberta Wark, a schoolteacher. Wark was educated at Kilmarnock Grammar Primary and subsequently Ayr's independent Wellington School. After studying history at the University of Edinburgh, Wark joined the BBC in 1976 as a researcher for BBC Radio Scotland and, in 1982, moved to television. She produced BBC Scotland's lunchtime political programme Agenda and eventually became a BBC television presenter, including a presenter of Breakfast Time. In 1988 she was one of the first reporters to cover the Lockerbie disaster. In 1990, Wark demonstrated her distinctive line of questioning in an interview with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Wark was a presenter on BBC2 arts programme The Late Show (from 1990-3) and the heritage programme One Foot in the Past.

Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941) is a best-selling American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years until his death from brain cancer in 2002.

Rice was born the second of four daughters of Irish Catholic parents, Howard O'Brien and Katherine "Kay" Allen O'Brien, in New Orleans. Rice's father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and authored the book, The Impulsive Imp, which was published posthumously. Rice's older sister, the late Alice Borchardt, was a noted genre author. Her husband, Stan Rice was a highly regarded poet, and their son, Christopher Rice is a bestselling author.

Rice's early years were marked by coping with her mother's advancing alcoholism and poverty. She lived in the Irish Channel of New Orleans, which she describes as an Irish Catholic ghetto, in the rented home of her maternal grandmother, Alice Allen, known as "Mamma Allen," at 2301 St. Charles Avenue. Mamma Allen, a hard working Irish Catholic woman who worked as a domestic after she separated from her alcoholic husband, was an important early influence in Rice's life, keeping the family and household together while Rice's mother sank deeper into alcoholism. She died in 1949, but the O'Briens remained in her home until 1956, when they moved to 2524 St. Charles Avenue, a former rectory, convent, and school owned by the parish, to be closer to the church and support for her mother's advanced alcoholism.