Famous Journalists and Nonfiction Authors a to z

Arianna Huffington is a prolific author and international media mogul who started the award-winning news platform The Huffington Post.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is best known as one of two African-American students first admitted to the University of Georgia and is an award-winning journalist.

Distinguished journalist and television news correspondent Gwen Ifill is one of the most successful female African-American reporters of all time.

Cuban born writer Guillermo Infante was a success for many works, including Tres tristes tigres, winning the Miguel Cervantes literary prize in 1997.

Naturalist Terri Irwin is well-known as the widow of wildlife expert Steve Irwin. The couple co-hosted the Animal Planet show The Crocodile Hunter.

Jesse Jackson Jr. is the son of the famous Reverend Jesse Jackson. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2012.

Jesse Jackson is an American civil rights leader, Baptist minister and politician who twice ran for U.S. president.

Author and activist Jane Jacobs wrote about preserving urban neighborhoods, in books like The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Dark Age Ahead.

The writings of psychologist and philosopher William James had a major impact on the way we look at the mind, the body, and the world.

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, John Jay is known as a writer of The Federalist Papers and for being the nation's first chief justice.

A respected television journalist, Peter Jennings served as ABC's nightly news anchor from 1983 to 2005.

James Weldon Johnson was an African-American writer, politician, educator and lawyer. He was also an early civil rights activist and leader of the NAACP.

June Jordan was an African American author who investigated both social and personal concerns through poetry, essays, and drama.

Daniel J. Boorstin was a writer and historian known for his Americans trilogy and The Discoverers.

Judith Sheindlin, or Judge Judy as she is known, is a no-nonsense courtroom presence on the TV show Judge Judy.

Raden Adjeng Kartini is a Javanese noblewoman and is best known as a pioneer in the area of women's rights for native Indonesians.

American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU.

Jack Kerouac was an American writer best known for the novel On the Road, which became an American classic, pioneering the Beat Generation in the 1950s.

Imre Kertész is a Hungarian writer who survived the Holocaust and went on to win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Novelist Ken Kesey wrote One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, which in the U.S. became one of the most widely read books of the 1960s.

Biologist Alfred Kinsey wrote Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was based on research he and his colleagues conducted at the Institute for Sex Research.

Julia Kristeva is a psychoanalyst, critic and novelist, known for her writings in structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis and philosophical feminism.

Charles Kuralt was a multiple Emmy and Peabody Award-winning broadcast journalist who produced the well-loved "On The Road" segments for the CBS Evening News.

D.H. Lawrence is best known for his infamous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was banned in the United States until 1959, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Vladimir Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state.

Environmentalist Aldo Leopold served as director of the Audubon Society in the mid-1930s. He also founded the Wilderness Society.

Italian Jewish chemist Primo Levi survived a year at Auschwitz against all odds. He is best known his moving memoir, If This Is a Man.

Angst-ridden and neurotic, Richard Lewis turned his private pain into a comic persona that served him as a standup comedian and versatile actor, adding author to his credits when he penned a memoir of struggling with sobriety.

Sinclair Lewis was a journalist and Nobel Prize winning novelist known for 20th century works like Main Street, Elmer Gantry and Babbitt.

Writer and aviation pioneer Anne Morrow Lindbergh was married to aviator Charles Lindbergh. The couple’s child was kidnapped for ransom and murdered in 1932.

Jack London was a 19th century American author and journalist, best known for the adventure novels White Fang and The Call of the Wild.

Journalist Elijah Lovejoy staunchly defended his right to publish abolitionist material in his newspaper, and died at the hands of a proslavery mob in 1837.

Lulu is a Scottish-born singer who performed "To Sir With Love" and appeared in the classic film of the same name alongside Sidney Poitier.

Journalist, television personality and author Joan London was on Good Morning America for nearly two decades, and was one of the most popular TV co-hosts.

William Lyon Mackenzie was a journalist and political agitator who led an unsuccessful revolt against the Canadian government in 1837.

Shirley MacLaine is one of Hollywood's legendary leading ladies, known for a vast span of films that include The Apartment, Sweet Charity and Terms of Endearment.

Alfred Thayer Mahan was an American naval officer and historian who was an exponent of sea power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Author Norman Mailer used a style combining fiction and journalism to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Executioner's Song.

William Manchester was a historian who notably wrote about American president John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill.

Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa in 1994. A symbol of global peacemaking, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Herman J. Mankiewicz was a journalist and screenwriter who won an Academy Award for his work on the film Citizen Kane.

German novelist, short-story and essay writer Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. One of his best-known novels is Death in Venice.

Though best known for her fictional novel, Deerbrook, British author Harriet Martineau also wrote about economics and social theory.

A poet and a journalist, José Martí spent his short life fighting for Cuban independence. He died in 1895 during a failed attempt to win freedom for Cuba.

German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx published The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, anticapitalist works that form the basis of Marxism.

Bat Masterson was a prominent lawman, gambler, saloon keeper and sports writer of the American West. He was a good friend of legendary lawman Wyatt Earp.

Journalist and political commentator Chris Matthews is best known as the talk show host of MSNBC's Hardball and The Chris Matthews Show.

Robert C. Maynard was a journalist and publisher best known for being the first African-American to own and publish a major daily newspaper (Tribune).

Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt wrote the biography Angela’s Ashes after retiring from teaching for 30 years in New York City.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher and man of letters, the leading exponent of phenomenology in France.

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who was a revered pacifist and author, with works like Seven Storey Mountain and Thoughts in Solitude.

Anne Moody is an African-American author whose writings about her personal and political struggles during the American Civil Rights Movement became classic.

Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, satirist, composer, singer and close friend of Lord Byron.

Thomas More is known for his 1516 book Utopia and for his untimely death in 1535, after refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England. He was canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint in 1935.

Piers Morgan hosts his own interview show, Piers Morgan Tonight, and served a judge on America's Got Talent from 2006 to 2011.

Naturalist, writer, and advocate of U.S. forest conservation, John Muir founded the Sierra Club and helped establish Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks.

American radio and television news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow gave eyewitness reports of WWII for CBS and helped develop journalism for mass media.

Nobel Prize-winning Swedish economist and sociologist Gunner Myrdal is regarded as a major theorist of international relations and developmental economics.

Sir V.S. Naipaul is a Trinidadian-British writer of Indian descent known for his novels set in developing countries. He won the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his novel, Half a Life.

Thomas Nast is known as the “Father of the American Cartoon,” having created satirical art during the 19th century that critiqued slavery and crime.

Asra Nomani is known for her fight for women's equality in the American Islamic community.

Bill Nye is a humorous writer best known for founding the Laramie Boomerang. His newspaper and writings quickly became popular across America.

Irish nationalist and playwright Sean O’Casey wrote about life in the slums of Dublin, in plays like The Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars.