Patrick O’Brian
The charm and pace of his prose is unequalled in contemporary fiction and his characters are drawn so deftly, with such poise and humor alike I smile on every page.
Carlos Ruis Zafón
Lucia Graves (his translator) deserves equal credit for the winding, rich, and labyrinthine layering of genres in his English works. Combine that with the gothic and ever so slightly melodramatic atmosphere in his novels and one can’t help but get lost in the best possible way.
Jorge Luis Borges
The more I read Borges, the more I read Borges. As others juggle and define nuance with characters, he does so with ideas, concepts, and fantasies: masterfully.
Heads of the Colored People
This book by Nafissa Thompson-Spires should be read and read again, the first time for shock, the second time to see, the third time to understand.
Italo Calvino
Never a traditional read and never a dull one either, one can love Calvino at every level: whether for the beauty of his words, his sentences, the stories, or their structure, Calvino always disarms, entertains, and elevates.I’m an ardent lover of odd and crooked thought, whether it be in prose, poetry, film, or sound. It is not enough to be strange, but be strange with purpose. The writing I most enjoy both to create and to read explores those crevices of thought, of emotion, of life both traditional and marginal to get at the truth if possible.
Steven Cousler is a current MFA candidate at New Mexico State University where he teaches English.