On the Ten Writers Influencing Creative Writing Students

A Draft List

Having thought about it, and asked around, I am going to put out this list — with all possible hesitations and caveats.

Other suggestions gratefully received.

But I think it’s useful for anyone going in to teach Creative Writing, perhaps for the first time, to know who their students are likely to be thinking is a really good writer.

These, in my experience, are some of the current invisible presences in the workshop.

I’m also including a single work by each that is mentioned very often.

1. Sally Rooney, Normal People 

2. Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

3. Madeline Miller, Circe

4. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 

5. Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

6. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

7. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

8. Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

9. John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I can hear you shouting.

Don’t just shout, reply.

Some of these writers (Madeline Miller and John Green) are more likely to figure for BA rather than MA or MFA level students.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is here because The Great Gatsby is a common ‘A’ Level text, and it’s the one students often take to.

The years of Stephenie Meyer (Twilight) and vampire-werewolf romances are now long gone, but I think Suzanne Collins is still well worthy of her place here. That’s partly because many students are likely to be working on dystopias, and also because that novel’s close first person singular present tense is very much imitated — consciously or unconsciously.

Sarah J. Maas is the rising star here. I think this is partly because some students are shy about saying they like JK Rowling, who is an obvious omission. It’s very likely any keen reader below around 30 years-old has, at some stage, loved Harry Potter. When I’m looking for a common reference point in a BA workshop, Rowling’s novels and, quite unconnectedly, the film Lion King, are my first and second try.

The phenomenon of retellings (of Greek and other myths) has not yet peaked, I think. And there are dozens of other authors who have come along after — mainly — Madeline Miller.

Maggie Nelson (the only non-fiction author) and Ocean Vuong are rightly loved by students who have started to explore the bookshopworld more widely, more confidently.

Sally Rooney and Bernadine Evaristo have been so widely read that students are likely to have picked up a parent’s or aunt’s or friend’s copy of their novels. There have also been Rooney’s TV adaptations, and Evaristo’s forthcoming Mr Loverman.

Chuck Palahniuk was a suggestion for this list over on Facebook (by Ailsa Cox, who has written a great guide to writing short stories). It seemed to ring true, so I’ve included it.

I’m not passing judgement here. I have not read all these books — though I mean to get to some of them soon.

Here are a few other possible authors and their main books who nearly made it, and perhaps should have done —

• Rachel Cusk, Outline 

• Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family 

• Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love 

• George Saunders, Pastoralia

• Steven King, On Writing

Other suggestions, corrections, howls of outrage —