Xu Xnrán (pen name Xinran) is a British-Chinese journalist and broadcaster, born in Beijing in 1958.

In the late 1980s, she began working for Chinese Radio and went on to become one of China's most successful journalists.

In 1997 she moved to London, where she initially worked as cleaner.

Edith Wharton, born Edith Newbold Jones (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.

Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander. She had two brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward.

Katherine Dunn is a best-selling novelist, journalist, voice artist, radio personality, book reviewer, and poet from Portland, Oregon.

Dunn was born in Garden City, Kansas on October 24, 1945. She went to high school in Tigard, Oregon, and later attended Reed College in Portland.

Alexandra David-Néel was born Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David in Saint-Mandé on 24 October 1868; she died in Digne-les-Bains, on 8 September 1969 at the age of 100.

David-Neel was a Belgian-French explorer, anarchist, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners. She wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels. 

Simone Weil, was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.

Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany.

She grew up in comfortable circumstances, as her father was a doctor.