Arundhati Roy

Born in India, Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her debut novel, The God of Small Things. She worked most notably as a political activist and writer in the subsequent decades, publishing her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in 2017. In a 2003 speech at Riverside Church in Harlem, she told the crowd, “I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people. History is giving you the chance. Seize the time.”