I discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Certainly, my exposure in high school to writers like Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Graham Greene was formative.
John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
My mentor in college was Stephen Shore. I loved his color palettes and his taking mundane things but finding them fascinating.
Ray Bradbury was the first author that I was really exposed to back in grade school. I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan, but the emotion and humanity that Bradbury brings to his stories and the way he uses sci-fi to get at the human heart is something that's unique and for me incredibly influential.
I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature.
I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.
My favorite author is David Baldacci; I've read all his books. I even have a picture with Baldacci taken during his book-signing in the States.
I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.
When it comes to writers, I'm a huge fan of Ian McEwan. I've never taken a writing course, but reading and deconstructing his novels has been as good a lesson as any.
One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly.