After we shared our list of the fifty most inspiring authors in the world [2], [2]we asked our readers to add their favorites. Culled from the responses on pw.org and our Facebook [3] page, here are the results:
Kim Addonizio | Beckian Fritz Goldberg | Alice Munro |
Sherman Alexie | Peter Handke | Cees Nooteboom |
Aharon Appelfeld | Joy Harjo | Naomi Shihab Nye |
Suzanna Arundhati Roy | Jim Harrison | Mary Oliver |
Margaret Atwood | Seamus Heaney | Michael Ondaatje |
Paul Auster | Mark Helprin |
Robert Pinsky |
Nicholson Baker | Alice Hoffman | Sheenagh Pugh |
Russell Banks | bell hooks | Adrienne Rich |
Wendell Berry | Michel Houellebecq | Marilyn Robinson |
Eric Bogosian | Eduardo Hughes Galeano |
Richard Rodriguez |
Ray Bradbury | John Irving |
Philip Roth |
J. M. G. Le Clézio | Kazuo Ishiguro | Carlos Ruiz Zafón |
Lucille Clifton | Denis Johnson | Scott Russell Sanders |
Evan Shelby Connell | Edward P. Jones | George Saunders |
Dennis Cooper | Mary Karr | Ruth Schwartz |
Wendy Cope | Jamaica Kincaid | Tom Sharpe |
Edwidge Danticat | Barbara Kingsolver | Joan Silber |
Marie Darrieussecq | Milan Kundera | Charles Simic |
Annie Dillard | Jhumpa Lahiri |
José de Sousa Saramago |
Rita Dove | Wally Lamb |
Mark Strand |
John Dufresne | Anne Lamott |
Elizabeth Strout |
Peter Everwine | Li-Young Lee |
Natasha Trethewey |
Lillian Faderman | Ursula K. Le Guin |
Anne Tyler |
Neil Gaiman | Jan Heller Levi | William T. Vollmann |
William H. Gass | Larry McMurtry |
Alice Walker |
Amy Gerstler | W. S. Merwin |
Rebecca Walker |
Ellen Gilchrist | Steven Millhauser | Terry Tempest Williams |
Nikki Giovanni |
Patrick Modiano |
Josef Winkler |
Natalie Goldberg | Lorrie Moore |
Franz Wright |
Dean Young |