2017 Favorite Authors

“F. Scott Fitzgerald who lived a life that epitomized the Jazz Age while writing about the corruptible influence and ultimately unobtainable of the American Dream. One of my prized possessions is a first edition F. Scott Fitzgerald collections from the 1920’s.”

Favorite Work(s): The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night

“Franz Kafka perfectly told stories through a lens of surrealism, confusion, and the paralysis of being completely alienated by your own life.”

Favorite Work(s): The Trial, The Metamorphosis

“Frank Herbert is a science fiction writer most known for the space-opera Dune. I like Herbert’s writing style as well has his ability to mix extremely imaginative worlds with real human drama.”

Favorite Work(s): Dune

“Everyone knows J. R. R. Tolkien for his Middle Earth works. He was also an oxford Don and a scholar. His ability to build immense worlds with their own mythology, political structures, languages, and histories is just awe inspiring.”

Favorite Works: Lord of the Rings

“Suzanne Collins for her bad-ass female heroine and the pure escapism of her books.”

Favorite Work(s): The Hunger Games

“Shel Silverstein for his immense creativity and ability to make the weird understandable and relatable and make the normal seem insane.”

Favorite Work(s): The Giving Tree

“Neil Degrasse Tyson for his ability to take very complex subjects and make them relative to readers without “dumbing down” the science.”

Favorite Work(s): Death by Black Hole

“While he was writing for a contemporary audience, Victor Hugo’s characters are so well developed that his novels transport you to another time and place.”

Favorite Work(s): Les Miserables

“Marcos Aguinis is an Argentine writer from my home Cordoba, Argentina. His Jewish roots show through in his writings and his works are focused on the notions of independence, democracy and rejection of authoritarianism. Growing up during Argentina’s military government, these ideas have always been very important to me.”

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• “Suzanne Collins David Shankbone 2010.jpg” by David Shankbone is licensed under CC BY 2.0