Voices we read

Thirty people who shaped the questions we ask here

Ten names in each of three fields the salon keeps returning to. Not a ranking — a reading list, and an invitation to argue with it.

Philosophy for Children & Communities

The tradition of doing philosophy together — in classrooms, libraries and community rooms — rather than about each other.

01
Matthew Lipman
Founder, Philosophy for Children
Turned the classroom into a community of inquiry and wrote the first philosophical novels for children.
02
Ann Margaret Sharp
Co-founder, IAPC
Insisted that thinking well and caring well are the same practice.
03
Gareth B. Matthews
Philosopher
Argued that children's questions are genuine philosophy, not rehearsal for it.
04
Karin Murris
Educator and theorist
Works on picturebooks as philosophical texts and on listening to children as thinkers.
05
Oscar Brenifier
Philosophical practitioner
Runs philosophical consultations and workshops built on uncomfortable questions.
06
Peter Worley
Co-founder, The Philosophy Foundation
Designs sessions that give facilitators a way to stay quiet and let thinking happen.
07
Michel Sasseville
Université Laval
Built one of the widest reaching programmes for training philosophy facilitators.
08
Walter Kohan
Philosopher of childhood
Reads childhood as a condition of thought rather than a stage to grow out of.
09
Thomas Wartenberg
Mount Holyoke College
Uses children's picture books to open questions of justice, identity and knowledge.
10
Jana Mohr Lone
University of Washington
Writes on the philosophical child and the ethics of taking young voices seriously.

Writers whose work sits where the salon does: between image, idea and the difficulty of saying a true thing.

01
Jorge Luis Borges
Fiction, essays
Libraries, mirrors and infinities — the patron saint of questions that refuse to close.
02
John Berger
Critic, novelist
Ways of Seeing made looking at art a political and intimate act.
03
Susan Sontag
Essayist
Asked what images do to us, and argued against interpretation as a reflex.
04
Italo Calvino
Novelist
Lightness, exactitude, multiplicity — a working list of virtues for any conversation.
05
Maggie Nelson
Poet, essayist
Writes at the seam of art criticism, theory and personal life.
06
Rebecca Solnit
Essayist
On getting lost, on hope, on how stories build or dissolve communities.
07
James Baldwin
Novelist, essayist
The clearest demonstration that disagreement can be a form of love.
08
Anne Carson
Poet, classicist
Moves between ancient texts and contemporary grief without a seam showing.
09
Olga Tokarczuk
Novelist
Writes constellation novels — many voices, one question held in common.
10
Ataol Behramoğlu
Poet
A poet of solidarity and plain speech; wrote the foreword to Kanatlarımızdaki Gökyüzü.

Practitioners and theorists who treat making as a language in its own right, not as an illustration of words.

01
Edith Kramer
Art as therapy
Held that the act of making is itself the healing, before any interpretation.
02
Margaret Naumburg
Pioneer of art therapy
Brought analytic listening to spontaneous images and founded the field in the US.
03
Shaun McNiff
Expressive arts therapy
Works across media — image, movement, sound — and trusts the imagination's own intelligence.
04
Cathy Malchiodi
Trauma-informed practice
Links art making to the body and to how trauma is actually held.
05
Judith Rubin
Clinician and author
The Art of Art Therapy remains the field's most humane training text.
06
Lucia Capacchione
Creative journaling
Developed non-dominant-hand drawing and writing as a route to unheard voices.
07
Bruce Moon
Existential art therapy
Treats the studio as an ethical space where the therapist also makes work.
08
Pat Allen
Open Studio Project
Intention, attention, witness writing — a practice anyone can hold without a clinician.
09
Frances Kaplan
Researcher
Presses the field on evidence, art and the science of emotion.
10
Marian Liebmann
Groups and conflict
Uses art therapy in community settings, restorative justice and group work.