Margot Adler is an NPR correspondent. Her reports can be heard regularly on “All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition,” and “Weekend Edition.”
Kurt Andersen is a novelist, columnist (New York, The New Yorker, The New York Times), public radio host, and a former editor (New York, Spy).
Wes Anderson is a director, co-writer, and producer. Two of his films, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, were nominated for an Academy Award.
David Ansen is the artistic director of the Los Angeles Film Festival. He has written documentaries for TNT and HBO on Bette Davis, Groucho Marx, and Elizabeth Taylor. He was previously the movie critic of Newsweek.
Alan Arkin is a founding member of Chicago’s Second City Theater. He is the recipient of a Tony, an Obie, a Golden Globe, and two New York Film Critics Circle awards. He has written seven books, one of which was chosen to be placed in the White House Library.
Sir John Ashworth has been the chairman of the British Library Board, the director of the London School of Economics, and the British government’s chief scientist. In 2008 he received a knighthood for public service.
Ken Auletta writes the “Annals of Communications” column for The New Yorker. He is the author of ten books, four of which have been national best sellers.
Lidia Matticchio Bastianich is one of the most beloved chefs on television, a bestselling cookbook author, and restaurateur.
Stephen Bayley is one of the world’s best-known commentators on design and popular culture, as well as a bestselling author.
Graydon Carter was the editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 to 2017. He has received seven National Magazine Awards.
Michael Cunningham’s novels include The Hours, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Pen/Faulkner Award.
Janine di Giovanni has won numerous prizes for her reporting from war zones, including two Amnesty International awards, the National Magazine Award, and Foreign Correspondent of the Year.
Sir Christopher Frayling is a historian, critic, author, and award-winning broadcaster. Until recently, he was Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chair of Arts Council England.
John Guare received the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his Obie-, New York Drama Critics’ Circle–, and Tony-winning plays, including House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
David Hare is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His twenty-seven plays include Plenty and Stuff Happens.
Buck Henry writes screenplays, many of which have won major awards.
Kathy Horyn is the fashion critic of The New York Times.
Anjelica Huston has appeared in a boggling variety of films, from Prizzi’s Honor (for which she won an Academy Award) to The Grifters to The Addams Family, and most recently, Wes Anderson’s films.
Sir Nicholas Hytner is the artistic director of London’s National Theatre.
Pico Iyer is a travel writer and a longtime essayist for Time magazine. He is the author of many books, including The Art of Stillness, The Man Within My Head, The Open Road, and The Lady and the Monk.
Laura Linney received a Golden Globe award for her role in The Big C. She has been nominated three times for an Academy Award.
Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer and politician, is author of The Time of the Hero and The War of the End of the World, among other novels. In 1990 Vargas Llosa ran for the Peruvian presidency. In 2010, he received the Nobel Prize in literature.
Glenn Lowry is the director of MoMA.
Judith Martin writes the “Miss Manners” column on etiquette, which is published in more than two hundred newspapers worldwide.
Patricia Marx is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a former writer for Saturday Night Live, and a party planner for the C.I.A.
Richard Meier, a world renown architect, received the Pritzker Prize in 1984.
Danny Meyer’s restaurants include Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe and Maialino,. He is an active national leader in the fight against hunger, serving on the board of Share Our Strength.
John Julius Norwich’s many books include A History of Venice and The Popes. He has written thirty historical documentaries for television. He is co-chairman of the World Monuments Fund, and a Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.
Robert Pinsky has served as United States Poet Laureate. He has appeared on both The Simpsons and The Colbert Report.
Martin Puryear’s sculpture is in the collections of many major American museums. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award and a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant.
Anna Quindlen is an author, journalist, and opinions columnist whose New York Times column, “Public and Private,” won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. She has written five bestselling novels, three of which have been made into films.
Simon Schama is the art and culture critic for The New Yorker. His BBC/History Channel series on the history of Britain had an audience of three to four million in the U.K.
Martin Scorsese is, well, Martin Scorsese.
Gary Shteyngart is the author of Little Failure: A Memoir, Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan, which was selected as best book of the year by Time, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune.
Scott Simon is a host of NPR’s Weekend Edition, the top-rated U.S. news and public affairs program. He is the winner of Peabody and Emmy awards for war reporting.
Jane Smiley is the author of many novels, including A Thousand Acres and Ten Days in the Hills, as well as several works of non-fiction, most notably Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.
Frank Stella is one of the most significant figures in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. His work can be seen in the permanent collection of many major museums.
Mark Strand was the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Blizzard of One, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He has served as Poet Laureate of the United States.
Calvin Trillin is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. His books include the memoir About Alice and Deciding the Next Decider.