Mikhail Viktorovich Zygar is a Russian born journalist, writer and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of Russian news TV-channel Dozhd (2010–2015), which halted operations on 3 March 2022. Under Zygar's leadership, Dozhd provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices. The channel's coverage of politically sensitive issues, like the Moscow street protests in 2011 and 2012 as well as the conflict in Ukraine, has been dramatically different from the official coverage by Russia's national television stations. Zygar is also the author of the book All the Kremlin's Men (2017), the history of Putin's Russia, based on interviews with Russian politicians from Putin's inner circle.
Michaś Klimkovič was a Belarusian poet, librettist, and author. He wrote the lyrics to the Anthem of the Byelorussian SSR, and co-wrote the lyrics to the Anthem of the Republic of Belarus.
Mikheil Javakhishvili was a Georgian and Soviet novelist who is regarded as one of the top twentieth-century Georgian writers. His first story appeared in 1903, but then the writer lapsed into a long pause before returning to writing in the early 1920s. His recalcitrance to the Soviet ideological pressure cost him life: he was executed during the Great Purge and his writings were banned for nearly twenty years. In the words of the modern British scholar of Russian and Georgian literature, Donald Rayfield, "his vivid story-telling, straight in medias res, his buoyant humour, subtle irony, and moral courage merit comparison with those of Stendhal, Guy de Maupassant, and Émile Zola. In modern Georgian prose only Konstantine Gamsakhurdia could aspire to the same international level."
Miki Yoshikawa is a Japanese manga artist best known for her manga series Flunk Punk Rumble, Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches and A Couple of Cuckoos and their accompanying anime series. Her debut work was a one-shot called Glory Days in Kodansha's Magazine Special. She assisted Hiro Mashima on Rave Master and Fairy Tail. In 2005, she released the comedy one-shot Flunk Punk Rumble in Shonen Magazine Wonder, which was later made into a short series and eventually publicized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 2006 to 2011, with a total of 211 chapters. In 2012, she released Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, which has to date sold over 3 million copies, and was adapted into a live-action drama series and a TV anime series. In 2015, Yoshikawa attended Anime Expo as a guest.
Mikiso “Miki” Hane was a Japanese American professor of history at Knox College, where he taught for over 40 years. He wrote and translated over a dozen books, wrote many articles, and was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 1991. He was born in California, lived in Japan during his teenage years, and was interned in Arizona during WWII. He taught soldiers Japanese at Yale, then studied there, where he attained a bachelors in 1952, a masters in 1953, and doctorate degree in 1957. He studied in Japan and Germany, then taught at the University of Toledo and studied in India before coming to Knox College in 1961. He lived in Galesburg for the rest of his life, and both wrote and taught up until his death.
