Rebuilding my Life after Acid Attack

Pragya Singh had been married for less than a fortnight when a spurned suitor poured acid on her, leaving her, in her words, without a face. She's now started the Atijeevan Foundation in India to help other survivors get free medical treatment and find work after their recovery. She's also been working to create a skin bank.

Alison Bechdel - the award-winning American cartoonist who's had her life story turned into a musical on Broadway. It focuses on her childhood in a small town in Pennsylvania where her family ran a funeral home. When she was in college, Alison came out to her parents - and it was only then that she discovered her father was also hiding a secret.

Cal Flynn - a Scottish journalist who found herself with a dilemma when she started rooting around in her family history. She'd discovered a great-great-great uncle who was celebrated as a dashing explorer and pioneer, but when she started investigating his life story, she found out that he had been involved in a number of massacres of Aboriginal people in Australia. The discovery raised all sorts of difficult questions, and Cal went to Australia to try to answer them. She's written a book about her journey called Thicker Than Water.

Samy Ben Redjeb - one of our Outlook Inspirations top 50, a German-Tunisian vinyl enthusiast on how his love of African music led him to travel across the continent to hunt down and save recordings from the 1970s.

(Image: Pragya Singh. Credit: Pragya Singh.)