Shirley Jackson & Mary Shelley

Can't not pick Le Guin. The big ideas in The Dispossessed and the Left Hand of Darkness were what blew mind my mind in high school, the language and emotion still blow my mind re-reading them today

A fellow Sand fan out in the wild‽

The ever-overlooked George Sand, and the ever-beloved Clarice Lispector

Svetlana Alexievich, reading War's Unwomanly Face was life changing. For non-fiction it's Mary Renault, I have a bias for the time period but Renault in particular is pretty singular in that field of historical fiction in terms of how effortlessly engrossing her books are.

Alice Munro for short stories (haven't read any of her stories since the news broke a few days ago, but hoping that won't impact future enjoyment too much for me). Shirley Jackson for novels. She could have written either We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House and she would still probably be my answer. The fact that she wrote both blows everyone else out of the competition.

Ingeborg Bachmann

Flannery O'Connor

Also my favorite author: Woolf

mary gaitskill