question: Were both Joseph Epstein and Mary Renault writers?
answer: yes
context: Title: Joseph Epstein
  Passage: Joseph Epstein (October 16, 1911 – April 11, 1944 in Fort Mont-Valérien, France), also known as "Colonel Gilles" and as "Joseph Andrej", was a Polish-born Jewish communist activist and a French Resistance leader during World War II.  He was executed by the Germans.
  Title: Charles Epstein (geneticist)
  Passage: Charles Joseph Epstein (September 3, 1933 – February 15, 2011) of Tiburon, California, was a geneticist who was severely injured in 1993 when he became a victim of a mail bomb attack by the Unabomber.  He was a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco and the Buck Institute for Age Research.
  Title: Joseph Epstein (writer)
  Passage: Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937) is an essayist, short-story writer, and editor.  From 1974 to 1998 he was the editor of the magazine "The American Scholar".
  Title: The Persian Boy
  Passage: The Persian Boy is a 1972 historical novel written by Mary Renault and narrated by Bagoas, a young Persian from an aristocratic family who is captured by his father's enemies, castrated, and sold as a slave to the king Darius III, who makes him his favorite.  Eventually he becomes the lover and most faithful servant of Alexander the Great, who overthrew Darius and captured the Persian Empire.  Bagoas' narration provides both a Persian view of the conquest and an intimate look at the personality of the conqueror.  In Renault's view, Alexander's love for Bagoas influenced his desire to unite the Greek and Persian peoples.  Renault also posits the notion that Alexander's relentless drive to conquer the world stemmed in part from his troubled relationship with his domineering mother, and his desire to "escape" from her influence by leading his army ever eastward.
  Title: Mary Renault
  Passage: Mary Renault ( ; 4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983), born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece.  In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander.
  Title: The Yale Book of Quotations
  Passage: The Yale Book of Quotations is a quotations collection that focuses on modern and American quotations and claims a high level of scholarship and reliability.  Edited by Fred R. Shapiro, it was published by Yale University Press in 2006 with a foreword by Joseph Epstein, ISBN  .  Prior to publication it was referred to by its working title, "The Yale Dictionary of Quotations".  The book presents over 12,000 quotations on 1067 pages.  It is arranged alphabetically by author (or, for some quotations, by quotation type), with some information as to the source of each quotation and, where the editor deems this relevant, cross-references to other quotations.  A keyword index allows the reader to generally find quotations by significant words in the quotations.
  Title: Alex Epstein (American writer)
  Passage: Alexander Joseph Epstein ( ; born August 1, 1980) is an American author, energy theorist, and industrial policy pundit.  He is the founder and President of the Center for Industrial Progress, a for-profit think tank located in San Diego, California.  Epstein is also the "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" (2014), in which he advocates the use of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.  Epstein is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a former fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.
  Title: The King Must Die
  Passage: The King Must Die is a 1958 bildungsroman and historical novel by Mary Renault that traces the early life and adventures of Theseus, a hero in Greek mythology.  Naturally, it is set in Ancient Greece: Troizen, Corinth, Eleusis, Athens, Knossos in Crete, and Naxos.  Rather than retelling the myth, Renault constructs an archaeologically and anthropologically plausible story that might have developed into the myth.  She captures the essentials while removing the more fantastical elements, such as monsters and the appearances of gods.  "The King Must Die" was lauded by critics, with "New York Times" reviewer Orville Prescott calling it "one of the truly fine historical novels of modern times."  Renault wrote a sequel, "The Bull from the Sea", in 1962.
  Title: Plausible Prejudices
  Passage: Plausible Prejudices: Essays on American Writing is a 1985 collection of essays by Joseph Epstein dealing with literary criticism and other subjects.
  Title: The Praise Singer
  Passage: The Praise Singer is a historical novel by Mary Renault first published in 1978.  Its narrator and main character is the real-life lyric poet Simonides of Keos, whose life (ca. 556 BC-469 BCE) spanned the transition from an oral to a written culture in Ancient Greece.  Renault's fiction argues that this transition was in part responsible for the cultural flowering known as the Golden Age of Athens—though she also gives credit to Hipparchus, Tyrant of Athens, who attracted talented artists like Simonides to live in his city.  Renault depicts him as having the works of Homer set down in writing for the first time.
citations: Joseph Epstein (writer) Mary Renault