So here you have 51 of my favorite writers. Looking back over them, I recall one girlfriend who, on entering my apartment the first time, burst out with the question, “Have you read all these books?”
I was equally startled by her question, realizing that this romance wouldn’t be going very far. Of course I had read them. Well, most of them. The others were simply biding their time.
Now there’s also the startling question of just how I found the time to read them, considering I was working fulltime and also writing and submitting to journals intensely on the side. On the other hand, it’s been more than 50 years since I graduated from college, so if I devoured just one book a year, it would add up.
Long ago I discovered that if you ask a classical composer for his favorite composers, or a painter for favorite painters, or writers for their favorites, the list will be filled with names totally new to you. I suppose actors and playwrights and photographers and architects will be just as quirky.
I hope this weekly list of writers has turned up some new names for you in that manner.
I can think of some bad influences, like William S. Burroughs, Hunter Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy.
And think of others who didn’t make my list, though I’ve admired and enjoyed them – Rilke, Rumi, Bill Stafford, Wallace Stevens, Hermann Hesse, Saul Bellow. It could go on and on.
And a few more who are coming into focus as a to-be-read pile. Ursula LeGuin, Cynthia Orzick, Philip K. Dick …
It even has me pondering the question, Does a writer ever read for mere pleasure?
Who wrote the copy on all those cereal boxes I read as a kid, anyway?
Jnana's Red Barn 
We share some of your favorites. But as far as lesser-known authors I’ve enjoyed recently, here are some of them, in various genres: Gayle Forman (several books), Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone), B.A. Shapiro (The Art Forger), Jean Hanff Korelitz (The Plot; and I’m now reading The Latecomer–she’s very talented), Frank Conroy (Body and Soul), Lily King (Writers and Lovers; and I’m now reading Euphoria–very good too), Heather Rose (The Museum of Modern Love–about Marina Abramovic), Kazuo Ishiguro (several books), Brit Bennett (The Vanishing Half), Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge), Julie Schumacher (the English Experience–funny), David Nicholls (US–also funny), Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson (Altered Traits–a book about the benefits of meditation), and many others
What a wonderful list to add to the next-ahead pile! The fact is that we have so many amazing unknown writers slash voices who deserve attention. Push them as best you can!