Contemporary Authors is an annually updated reference work published by Gale Cengage. It provides biographical details on over 120,000 writers in all genres whose works have been published in the English language. Contemporary Authors was originally released as a series of books, but is now available in an online version.
Authors can submit information about themselves, but they must meet certain inclusion criteria to receive a profile in Contemporary Authors. Authors whose works have only been published by vanity presses are generally excluded.
The first edition of Contemporary Authors was released in 1962. The series is held in many libraries, and was honored by the American Library Association in 1985 as one of the "most distinguished reference titles" of the preceding 25 years.
Famous quotes containing the words contemporary and/or authors:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to set them right.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)