Archives: Authors

Jonathan D. Ostry is deputy director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund, where his work on financial globalization and inequality has been influential in bringing about a shift in the IMF’s stance on these issues. His many books include Taming the Tide of Capital Flows (2017). His work on inequality and unsustainable growth has been cited by, among others, Barack Obama.

Prakash Loungani is assistant director in the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office. Known for his work on the difficulty of forecasting recessions, he blogs as The Unassuming Economist.

Andrew Berg is deputy director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development. He previously served at the U.S. Treasury, including as deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and Latin America in 2000-2001 and chief economist of the Mexican Task Force in 1995-1996.

Rituparna Sarkar is a graduate of the National Institute of Design in animation film design and an
entrepreneur running her own design studio for the last eight years, creating illustrations, designs and films for
various brands.

Neil Johnson is a copywriter and Creative Director of an international advertising firm in Singapore. He led a travelling life thanks to his Dad’s naval career, and grew up in India and Europe. Neil is married with two grown up children and Singapore has been home since 1993. While growing up, his children – like all children – asked umpteen questions. The answers to those questions have become the stories he writes.

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817). Rightfully having earned the place of one of the most widely read authors in English Literature, her works of romantic fiction are well known for her social commentary of the happenings of the 18th century.
Jane Austen, the daughter of a clergyman, was born in Hampshire in 1775, and later lived in Bath and the village of Chawton. As a child and teenager, she wrote brilliantly witty stories for her family’s amusement, as well as a novella, Lady Susan. Her first published novel was Sense and Sensibility, which appeared in 1811 and was soon followed by Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. Austen died in 1817, and Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously in 1818.

Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832 in Pennsylvania. Her father was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. Alcott started selling stories in order to help provide financial support for her family. Her first book was Flower Fables (1854). She worked as a nurse during the American Civil War and in 1863 she published Hospital Sketches, which was based on her experiences. Little Women was published in 1868 and was based on her life growing up with her three sisters. She followed it with three sequels, Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886) and she also wrote other books for both children and adults. Louisa May Alcott was an abolitionist and a campaigner for women’s rights. She died on 6 March 1888.

Victor Hugo (1802-85). Poet, playwright and novelist, and one of the most prolific, versatile and acclaimed of the French Romantics. Hugo is chiefly remembered for his great novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851), the daughter of pioneering thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, eloped with the poet Percy Shelley at the age of sixteen. Three years later, during a wet summer on Lake Geneva, Shelley famously wrote her masterpiece, Frankenstein. The years of her marriage were blighted by the deaths of three of her four children, and further tragedy followed in 1822, when Percy Shelley drowned in Italy. Following his death, Mary Shelley returned to England and continued to travel and write until her own death at the age of fifty-three.