Ken Okoth, born 1978, was raised in the Kibera slums of Nairobi. In 2005, Ken earned his Masters of Arts Degree from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington DC. He was a teacher, coach, mentor, director, and professor at various institutions including the Potomac School, Georgetown University, the University of Dar es Salaam, and the Children of Kibera Foundation. Kenneth Okoth Biography and Profile.

Alice Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario, Canada on July 10, 1931. Alice Munro has also written television scripts. In October 2013, just after Munro’s Nobel Prize in Literature was announced, the New Yorker republished her “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (1999–2000) as a tribute to one of its own. Alice Laidlaw Munro Biography and Profile.

Emma Goldman, Anarchist and activist, was born June 27, 1869, Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania). She immigrated to the U.S. in 1885, where she worked in clothing factories. Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement. Emma Goldman criticism of mandatory conscription of young men into the military during World War I led to a two-year imprisonment, followed by her deportation in 1919. Emma Goldman Biography and Profile.

Mary Shelley, a writer, was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in London, England. Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a house filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers and writers of the day. Made a widow at age 24, Mary Shelley worked hard to support herself and her son. She wrote several more novels, including Valperga and the science fiction tale The Last Man (1826). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Biography and Profile.

Ruhollah Mousavi whose given name means “inspired of God” was born into a family of Shi’ite religious scholars in the small Iranian village of Khomein. When Ha’iri died in the 1930s, the Ayatollah Boroujerdi succeeded him as the most important Islamic figure in Qom. Khomeini is also well known for releasing a fatwa (a legal document issued by a Muslim cleric) calling for the death of Indian-British author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses in 1989. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Biography.