Contributors

Hannah Lucinda Smith is a writer, consultant and reporter for The Times and The Economist who has spent over 14 years covering the Middle East and the Balkans. A consistent Pulitzer grantee, she has also contributed to the Atlantic, Monocle, Spectator, Wired and TLS, among others, and has featured on BBC TV and radio. She is the author of Erdogan Rising and the co-writer of Zarifa. She is based in Istanbul.

Iain Sinclair was born in South Wales. He went to school in the west of England and university in Dublin. He lives, walks and writes in East London. His books include Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Prize), Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, American Smoke and The Last London.

Living with Buildings is published in association with Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death.

Martin Sixsmith studied Russian at Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne and in St Petersburg, and psychology at Birkbeck and London Metropolitan University. He witnessed the end of the Cold War first hand, reporting for the BBC from Moscow during the presidencies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He is the author of two novels and several works of non-fiction, including Philomena and Russia: A 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East.

Alix Kates Shulman is the author of fourteen books, including Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, which established her as a primary figure in feminism's second wave. A political activist, she joined the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and the Women's Liberation Movement in 1967. Shulman lives in Manhattan and continues to speak on issues such as feminism and reproductive choice.

The author of Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television, Lee Siegel is a cultual
commentator and art critic. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kate Simants spent several years as an investigative undercover journalist for Channel 4 and the BBC. She was shortlisted for a CWA Debut Dagger for her first novel Lock Me In and won the UEA Literary Festival scholarship to study for an MA in Crime Fiction. She graduated with distinction. Her second novel, A Ruined Girl, won the Bath Novel Award. Her third novel, Freeze, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives near Bristol with her family.

Arun Singh is a leading international business lawyer, non-executive director, corporate educator, visiting professor at UK universities and business schools and a senior government advisor with over 25 years experience. He has worked with companies from a range of sectors, professions and sovereign wealth funds in the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia. He was appointed an OBE for services to international trade and investment in January 1999 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacturers.

Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell's Presumptuous Task, winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John Le Carré, A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the University of St Andrews.

Sulak Sivaraksa (born 27 March 1932 in Siam) is a Thai social activist, professor, writer and the founder and director of the Thai NGO Sathirakoses-Nagapradeepa Foundation, named after two authorities on Thai culture, Sathirakoses (Phya Anuman Rajadhon) and Nagapradeepa (Phra Saraprasoet). He initiated a number of social, humanitarian, ecological and spiritual movements and organizations in Thailand, such as the College SEM (Spirit in Education Movement).
Sulak Sivaraksa is known in the West as one of the fathers of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), which was established in 1989 with leading Buddhists, including the 14th Dalai Lama, the Vietnamese monk and peace-activist Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Theravada Bhikkhu Maha Ghosananda, as its patrons.
When Sulak Sivaraksa was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1995 for 'his vision, activism and spiritual commitment in the quest for a development process that is rooted in democracy, justice and cultural integrity', he became known to a wider public in Europe and the US. Sulak was chair of the Asian Cultural Forum on Development and has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, the University of Toronto, and Cornell.

James G. Skakoon is General Manager of VERTEX Technology, an engineering consulting firm. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Leigh Skene is a Canadian who has been involved in financial markets ever since he first purchased equities when he was a teenager. He became involved in debt analysis and trading at the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada. He moved to the sell side and became Head of Fixed Income Trading at investment bank Burns, Fry and Company (now BMO Nesbitt Burns), then became Chief Economist. In 1980, he left Burns Fry and established himself as an independent economic consultant specializing in financial markets and wrote articles for several publications.
He has been a director of Lombard Street Associates since 2004, and wrote three key reports in 2007; The ABC of 21st Century Risk; The Sub-prime Mortgage Fiasco – The Start of Something Big; and Credit and Credibility which pointed out the dangers of the new financial system, warned of the impending credit crunch and forecast the ensuing financial turmoil. He has written five books on money and credit. His latest, The Impoverishment of Nations (2009) is a treatise on the long term outlook.

Navid Sinaki is an artist, filmmaker and poet. He was born in Tehran and currently lives in Los Angeles. His works have screened at museums and art houses around the world, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lincoln Center, British Film Institute, REDCAT, and Cineteca Nacional in Mexico. His writing has most recently appeared in BOMB Magazine. He is a professor at UCLA Extension and a film programmer, most notably at the Echo Park Film Center www.navidsinaki.com