Contributors

Gregory White Smith is, with Steven Naifeh, the co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Jackson Pollock (the basis for the film Pollock), which was also a finalist for the National Book Award and a NYT bestseller; and the co-author of Van Gogh.

Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II, he, with his family and other Jews from the area, were deported to the German concentration camps, where his parents and younger sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist.
In 1958, he published his first book, La Nuit, a memoir of his experiences in the concentration camps. He has since authored nearly thirty books, some of which use these events as their basic material. In his many lectures, Wiesel has concerned himself with the situation of the Jews and other groups who have suffered persecution and death because of their religion, race or national origin. He has been outspoken on the plight of Soviet Jewry, on Ethiopian Jewry and on behalf of the State of Israel today.
Wiesel made his home in New York City, and became a United States citizen. He was a visiting scholar at Yale University, a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City College of New York, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University where he taught 'Literature of Memory.' Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980 – 1986, Wiesel served on numerous boards of trustees and advisors. He died in 2016.

David Wilcock is a researcher of ancient civilisations and consciousness science. Over two million people have seen his documentary The 2012 Enigma. He is the author of The Hidden Science of Lost Civilisations, and more of his thoughts can be found on his website Divine Cosmos.

Nicola Wilding grew up in the Eden Valley in Cumbria as part of a rural, working-class family. Now a writer and TV producer, she has spent over two decades making documentaries on subjects such as poverty, class, education, farming, puppies and vacuum cleaners.

Ken Wilkie is an independent writer, editor and creative consultant, based in the Netherlands. He haincluding, for many years, the KLM inflight s launched and edited more than 20 publications
magazine Holland Herald. Ken Wilkie is a many-sided character which is reflected in his journalistic work. Most of his books focus on travel experience and the lives of artists where he combines investigative journalism with a personal style. He was named Journalist of the Year at the 2004 USA Travel Media Awards in London.

Sam Wilkin is a senior advisor to Oxford Analytica, a geopolitical analysis firm that counts more than 25 world governments among its clients. He is also a senior advisor to Oxford Economics, one of the world's foremost global forecasting consultancies. His previous book is Wealth Secrets of the One Percent.

Tiffany Watt Smith is a cultural historian and author of two books about the history of feeling On Flinching and The Book of Human Emotions. In 2014, she was named a BBC New Generation Thinker. She is currently a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, and a lecturer in the School of English and Drama. In her previous career, she was a theatre director.

Emma Whipday is Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Newcastle University, an AHRC BBC New Generation Thinker, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is an expert in Shakespeare, early modern literature, women's history, theatre history, and the history of the home and family.

Erin White is an essayist and the author of the memoir Give Up for You. Her writing has been previously published in The New York Times, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She lives in Minnesota with her wife and daughters.

Alex Wheatle (1963-2025) was born to Jamaican parents living in London. He spent most of his childhood in a children's home, which he left at 14 to live in a hostel in Brixton. At 18, he was involved in the Brixton uprising and went to prison for 3 months. On his release, he continued to perform as a DJ and MC under the name Yardman Irie, moving in the early '90s on to the performance poetry circuit as The Brixton Bard. His second novel, East of Acre Lane, won the London New Writers Award (2000).

Clive Webb is an award-winning historian based at the University of Sussex, where he is Professor of Modern American History and is the recipient of a Leverhulme Fellowship. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Guardian, Independent and The New York Times. He has also contributed to news programmes and documentaries on radio and television in Britain and the United States.

Arthur De Weduwen is associate editor of the Universal Short Title Catalogue project at St Andrews. This is his fifth book.

Silke Rose West is a Waldorf teacher with over thirty years of experience teaching kindergarten-aged children. In 1995, she cofounded the Taos Waldorf School and today she runs an independent forest kindergarten called Taos Earth Children. She is renowned in Taos for her puppet shows and storytelling and consults with teachers and schools across the US.

Michael Wex (born September 12, 1954) is a Canadian novelist, playwright, translator, lecturer, performer, and author of books on language and literature. His specialty is Yiddish and his book Born to Kvetch was a surprise bestseller in 2005. Wex lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter Sabina.
Michael Wex was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada to a family of descendants of Rebbes of Ciechanów and Stryków. He has taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.