I'm a big fan of the poet Mary Jo Salter, and although she doesn't need to be discovered at all - she's widely admired and anthologized and extremely accomplished - I wish she were a household name.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Obviously, my name is known now, but I don't think people generally tend to recognize authors very much. People like J. K. Rowling maybe, Gillian Flynn might be recognized, but I reckon she could walk by me on the street, and I wouldn't know who she was.
I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.
I didn't learn much about writing at Sarah Lawrence, but I learned a lot about the sources of poems - dreams, myth, history - from the really great teachers, Joseph Campbell, Charles Trinkhaus, Bert Loewenberg, and a young Australian anthropologist named Harry Hawthorne.
I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.
I'm like a unicorn; I'm a midlist writer who hasn't done anything else but write. But because I wasn't amazingly famous, I didn't become Stephanie Meyer, or even a huge literary name like a Jonathan Franzen or a Joshua Ferris.
There was Pauline de Rothschild, who I thought was very fabulous, and Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress, very chic, very clever, very original. I admired both those women very much. And I had a great example with my mother, who was extremely chic.
I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.
I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.
I have so many favorite authors; I can't name just one.
Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller are examples of poets, I think.