American Program Bureau is pleased to offer you one of the most comprehensive rosters of renowned literature speakers that include best-selling authors, historians, poets, essayists, academic experts on literary criticism, and spoken word artists. They offer illuminating commentary on a broad array of subjects and are perfect for any conference or commencement ceremony.
These high profile and award-winning literary icons of our time will share with you the finest, intellectually stimulating, thought-provoking, and entertaining presentations that always leave a lasting impression with audiences.
E.L. Doctorow
One of the most brilliant novelists of our time, Pulitzer Prize winner Doctorow traditionally explores the historical, cultural, and social dynamics in American life, often through the prism of the Jewish experience in his celebrated body of work, which includes The Book of Daniel – A Novel, and Ragtime.
Toni Morrison
One of the most prominent authors in world literature, the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning Morrison has authored such celebrated books as The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Song of Solomon. A National Book Critics Award recipient, her writings are notable for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly de ...
Augusten Burroughs
An acclaimed author, he had a very unusual childhood – a childhood that America has come to know in his best-selling memoir Running with Scissors that spent more than four years on The New York Times bestseller list, spawned an Oscar nominated film starring Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin and Gwyneth Paltrow, a ...
Naomi Klein
Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, and author of the international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Exploring the flaws of neoliberal economics and globalization, her stunning revelations and well-researched insight provides a backdrop to the connections betwee ...
Nicholas Kristof
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, Kristof is an extraordinary thinker, human rights advocate, and astute chronicler of humanity. As a seasoned journalist who has traveled the major roads and minor byways of China, Africa, India, and South Asia, he offers a compassionate glimpse into the issues ...
Susan Orlean
Author of The Orchid Thief, the inspiration behind the film Adaptation, Orlean is a writer for The New Yorker who is known for her talent for exploring the people and places that make up our national character. From the well-known to the unknown, she features how ordinary people have the most extraordin ...
David Mamet
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for "Glengarry Glenn Ross" and an award-winning film and television director, Mamet has also made a name for himself as author of The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews (Jewish Encounters), a provocative and passionate assertion about what it means to be Jewish ...
Geraldine Brooks
Displaying a wide range of talent in her best-selling books March, Year of Wonders and Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Brooks consistently crafts fascinating, meticulously researched fiction and non-fiction, effortlessly bringing her subjects to viv ...
Wally Lamb
Known for his best-selling She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, and for having twice earned a spot in Oprah’s Book Club, Lamb has since been popular with readers nationwide. From his intense The Hour I First Believed, a docudrama of the Columbine massacre, to his light-hearted Wishin ...
Ann Patchett
The best-selling author of Bel Canto, which sold over a million copies in the United States and has been translated into thirty languages, her most recent best-selling novel is entitled Run.
James McBride
An award-winning jazz musician, McBride is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Color of Water, a memoir that has become a modern classic. Spike Lee directed the film adaptation of McBride's book, Miracle at St. Anna, paying tribute to African American soldiers who fought in WWII.
Michael Patrick MacDonald
Author of the incendiary New York Times bestselling memoir All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, and the companion bestseller Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion, MacDonald shares his remarkable story of survival and redemption while examining the tangled relationship between poverty and c ...
Luis Alberto Urrea
An award-winning poet and essayist, Urrea authored the epic novel The Hummingbird’s Daughter, as well as the The Devil’s Highway, a best-selling nonfiction account of Mexican immigrants crossing over the US border. His latest book, Into the Beautiful North, is lauded for having Urrea’s characteri ...
Joseph J. Ellis
A nationally recognized scholar on American history from Colonial times through the early decades of the Republic, Ellis is the author of six books including Founding Brothers, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in history. Known for his elegant and engaging narrative, his biographies have become instant classics. Hi ...
Colson Whitehead
A critically lauded, award-winning voice, Whitehead has been heralded as a promising young author to watch by Publishers Weekly. Recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for John Henry Days, his brilliant collection provides an articulate view of race, culture, and class today. Recipi ...
A.J. Jacobs
Renowned as “the human guinea pig,” A.J. Jacobs has outsourced his life to India, read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a quest to become the smartest person in the world, and lived modern life as the ultimate biblical man. Throwing himself into bizarre situations all in the name of a little curiosity and a ...
Audrey Niffenegger
Known for her imaginative plots and brilliant prose, Niffenegger is the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, the inspired, best-selling novel behind the new film starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. She offers audiences an inside look at the creative process, the relationship between art and writing, and motivate ...
Michael Eric Dyson
Named by Essence magazine as one of the 50 most inspiring African Americans, Dyson is one of the nation's most renowned public intellectuals, revitalizing the role with the fervor of an ordained Baptist minister. Called "a street fighter in a suit and tie," he takes on the toughest and most controversial issues of th ...
Harlan Coben
Coben's hook and twist thrillers such as Tell No One have crested at the top of international bestseller lists, including The New York Times. The first author to win the top three mystery awards, he combines wise-cracking entertainment with skillful storytelling, creating his own exhilerating brand of fiction.
Sara Paretsky
One of the most influential female crime writers, the award-winning Paretsky changed the world of detective fiction with her groundbreaking popular female sleuth, "V.I. Waschawski." An activist, she explores the political and literary dissent that informed her life and work in her acclaimed book, Writing in an Age of Sil ...
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