When wealthy Mississippi cotton planter Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves' ...

Kennedy's Blues: African American Blues and Gospel Songs on JFK collects in a single volume the blues and gospel songs written by African Americans about the presidency of John F. Kennedy and offers a ...

In his prime, Vanity Fair nominated James Branch Cabell for "Immortality" on its pages reserved for acclaiming the most select of notable achievers. Favored by the intelligentsia, Cabell was the author ...

Mattie Griffith (1826-1906) has disappeared from American literary history. She remained a lifelong activist, first for abolition, and then for women's suffrage and for temperance.

Octavia Butler (1947-2006) spent the majority of her prolific career as the only major black female author of science fiction. Winner of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards as well as a MacArthur "genius" ...

Conversations with Ian McEwan collects sixteen interviews, conducted over three decades, with the British author of such highly praised novels as Enduring Love, Atonement, Saturday, and On Chesil Beach ...

Four-time winner at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (b. 1960) began his career while still an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. His first love was playwriting, but he ...

T. J. Morris is professor of English at the University of Indianapolis and has published in Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Mystics Quarterly, and Independent Film and Video Monthly.

The first Latin American actor to become a superstar, Ramon Novarro was for years one of Hollywood's top actors. Born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, he arrived in America in 1916, a refugee ...