New York's Most Important Living Writers

Cultural News and Critique FLAVORWIRE has published a list of 100 New York's Most Important Living Writers. When one realizes that New York became the centre of the world some time ago already, the conclusions are rather simple. One is for sure: the most creative and influential intellectuals are in the complex process of creation in this special city that never sleeps. Plus, if you can make it there, you can make it everywhere, as one wise man named Sinatra once sang. Here is my subjective excerpt from the list.

39. Malcolm Gladwell
Staff writer for The New Yorker, an academic, public speaker.
Works:
"The Tipping Point," "Blink," "Outliers," "What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures."

28. Michael Cunningham 
Writer, screenwriter, professor of creative writing at Yale.
Works:
Novels: "Golden States," "A Home at the End of the World," "The Hours," "Specimen Days," "By Nightfall," Screenplays: "A Home at the End of the World," "Evening."

26. Jonathan Safran Foer
Writer, essayist
Works:
Novels: "Everything is Illuminated," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "Tree of Codes," "Escape from Children;s Hospital" (2014).

 Malcolm Gladwell

 Michael Cunningham

Jonathan Safran Foer

21. Patti Smith

Singer, songwriter, writer, poet, visual artist

Works: studio albums: "Horses," "Radio Ethiopia," "Easter," "Wave," "Dream of Life," "Gone Again," "Peace and Noise," "Gung Ho," "Trampin'," "Twelve," "Bonga."

Books: "Seventh Heaven," "Early Morning Dream," "Witt," "Ha!Ha! Houdini!," "Babel," "Woolgathering," "Early Work," "The Coral Sea," "Strange Messanger," "Auguries of Innocence," "Just Kids."

 20. E.L. Doctorow

Novelist, playwright, academic.

Selected works: "Welcome to Hard Times," "Big as Life," "The Book of Daniel," "Ragtime," "Billy Bathgate," "The March," "Homer & Langley."

16. Jhumpa Lahiri

Novelist, academic.

Works: Novels: "The Namesake," short stories: "Interpreter of Maladies," "Unaccustomed Earth."

 

Patti Smith

E.L. Doctorow and Jhumpa Lahiri

15. Paul Auster

Writer, poet, essayist.

Selected works: "The New York Trilogy," "City of Glass," "Ghosts," "The Locked Room," "In the Country of Last Things," "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story," "Mr. Vertigo," "The Book of Illusions," "Man in the Dark," "Invisible."

10. Tony Kushner

Playwright, screenwriter.

Selected works: "Angels in America," "Munich," "Lincoln."

9. Zadie Smith

Novelist.

Selected works: "White Teeth," "The Autograph Man," "On Beauty."

 Paul Auster

 Tony Kushner

Zadie Smith

8. Jonathan Franzen

Writer, essayist.

Selected works: "The Corrections," "Freedom."

6. Don DeLillo

Writer, essayist, playwright.

Selected works: "Americana," "End Zone," "Running Dog," "The Names," "White Noise," "Libra," "Cosmopolis, "Falling Man," "Point Omega."

5. Thomas Pynchon

Novelist.

Selected works: "V.," "The Crying of Lot 49," "Gravity's Rainbow," "Vineland," "Mason & Dixon," "Against the Day."

 

Jonathan Franzen

 Don DeLillo

 Thomas Pynchon, who does not appear publicly

4. Salman Rushdie

Writer, essayist.

Selected works: "Midnight's Children," "Shame," "The Satanic Verses," "Fury," "The Enchantress of Florence."

3. Martin Amis

Novelist.

Selected works: "The Rachel papers," "Dead Babies," "Success," "Other People," "Money," "Night Train," "The Pregnant Widow."

2. Joan Didion

Novelist, literary journalist.

Selected works: "Run, River," "Play It as It Lays," "A Book of Common Prayer," "Democracy," "The Last Thing He Wanted."

 Salman Rushdie

 Martin Amis

Joan Didion

1. Philip Roth

Novelist.

Selected works: "Goodbye, Columbus," "Portnoy's Complaint," "The Great American Novel," "The Professor of Desire," "The Ghost Writer," "The Anatomy Lesson," "American Pastoral," "I Married a Communist," "The Human Stain," "Plot Against America," "Nemesis."

 Philip Roth in 1968.