John Legend

The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.

People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved.

The importance of heart health became very real for me when my father died of heart disease seven years ago. Having experienced the loss first hand, I am inspired to do everything I can to break the cycle and prevent families from losing loved ones to this preventable disease.

However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.