Actress Annette Bening has received Academy Award nominations for her performances in The Grifters (1990), American Beauty (1999), and Being Julia (2004). A lifelong arts advocate, Bening accepted a four-year appointment to the California Arts Council from 2004-2008. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Warren Beatty, and their four children.
Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is an acclaimed poet, critic, and literary anthologist. His third collection of poetry, Interrogations at Noon (2001), won the American Book Award. He has also written collections of essays, including Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992; 2002) and Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture (2004).
A 2008 recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, Olivia de Havilland is a legend of American cinema. A two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actress and a five-time nominee, her films include such classics as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939). She won an Oscar for her portrayal of Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (1949), a film adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square. Born in Tokyo, she grew up in California and has lived in Paris since the 1950s.
Musician Colin Meloy is both a solo artist and the leader of The Decemberists, a folk-rock band founded in 2000, whose CDs include The Tain (2004) and The Crane Wife (2006). As a songwriter, Meloy is known for his literary and historical references. His debut solo album is Colin Meloy Sings Live! (2008). He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.
The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, writer Cynthia Ozick was born and raised in New York. She has published several novels, short stories, and essay collections, including The Big Read selection The Shawl (1989), The Puttermesser Papers (1997), and Dictation: A Quartet (2008), a collection of four stories, one in which Henry James is a featured character. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in New York with her husband.
A museum professional, art and architecture historian, and arts administrator, Anne-Imelda M. Radice was the Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) from 2006-2010. IMLS is an independent United States government agency that supports our nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums and was the NEA's founding federal partner for The Big Read.
Novelist and journalist Colm Tóibín comes form Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland. After serving as editor of Magill, an Irish current affairs magazine, from 1982 to 1985, Tóibín turned to fiction. He published his first novel, The South, in 1990. He has continued writing acclaimed fiction and non-fiction including 2004's The Master, a novel featuring Henry James as a protagonist.
Gore Vidal is a best-selling novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright whose writing career has spanned more than six decades, with works including The City and the Pillar (1948), Myra Breckenridge (1968), Burr: A Novel (1973), and the memoirs Palimpsest (1995) and Point to Point Navigation (2006). A provocative commentator on American history and politics, Vidal's collected essays, United States (1993), won the National Book Award for non-fiction. He lives in the Hollywood Hills.
