Every writer has that book: the one that inspired them to pick up a pen, the one that they find themselves leafing through every time they’re at a loss for words. To see what the next generation of writers have been consulting, we checked in with our inaugural Young Writers list, unveiled in the magazine’s summer Indulgence issue, to see what they have close at hand. Below, you’ll find a collection as diverse as the voices championing them.
Emeline Atwood
“Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III (‘But I felt: you are an I, / you are an Elizabeth, / you are one of them’) or James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break and The Green Wall (‘One more night of walking, and I could have become / A horse, a blue horse, dancing / Down a road, alone.’)
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son and Largesse of the Sea Maiden (specifically, the title story and ‘Triumph Over the Grave’) — ‘Then sometimes I get up and don my robe and go out into our quiet neighborhood looking for a magic thread, a magic sword, a magic horse.’”
Lydia Mathis
“I discovered how long paragraphs could be in José Saramago’s Blindness or the mixed media, fold-out translation/memoir that is Nox by Anne Carson. In all the books I read that do something unusual, I found teachers. But I think Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World was what really showed me the weirdness that I eventually let infiltrate my writing voice.”
Malavika Kannan
“Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Problems by Jade Sharma. The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan.”
K-Ming Chang
“There are so many writers and artists who have formed and shaped me, but I always return to Marilyn Chin’s Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, a novel I discovered while browsing the library shelves as a teenager. The title made it instantly compelling. It transformed my conception of narrative forms, myth-making, stories about lineage, and all that I imagined was possible in prose. I was astonished by the combination of the sacred and the profane, the reverent and the irreverent, the mundane and the mythical—it was polyphonic and uncompromising. It epitomized the kind of playful, constantly transforming, and endlessly surprising spirit that I aspire toward.”
Sotce
“Right now, I’m reading The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Famesick by Lena Dunham, and Ulysses.”
Cay Kim
“The Lover by Marguerite Duras for its inimitable originality in voice and form; The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector for capturing the language for human spirituality; Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson for its rare feat of centering beauty without forfeiting subject matter of the utmost gravitas.”
Harold Rogers
“I read Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, over a week, trembling through a blizzard in my frozen apartment in NYC. My roommate was out of town; my room was impossibly cold; I dragged my mattress out into the living room. All I did was read this wild novel from 1758, kept alive by the heat of my chattering teeth. I couldn’t believe a work so old was so warm, hilarious, and alive. Tristram Shandy reminded me: you can actually do whatever the fuck you want in a novel.”
Leah Abrams
“The Conversion of the Jews by Philip Roth.”
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