Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three.

He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

John Fante was born in Denver on 8 April 1909 and migrated to Los Angeles in his early twenties.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), his first novel, began the saga of Arturo Bandini, a character whose story continues in The Road to Los Angeles, Ask the Dust and Dreams from Bunker Hill - collectively known as The Bandini Quartet.

Fante published several other novels, as well as stories, novellas and screenplays, in his seventy-four years, including The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977) and 1933 Was A Bad Year (posthumously, 1985). He was recognised in 1987 with a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in Los Angeles, four years after his death.

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, I'm Lying; The Obstacle Is the Way; Ego Is the Enemy; and other books about marketing, culture and the human condition.

His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Fast Company.

His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as multiplatinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.