Top Ten Authors I’d Love to Meet

“The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”

William Blake

1. Terry Pratchett. No one said they had to be alive. And I guess I’d just want to say thank you.
2. Neil Gaiman. Not my favourite writer, but he’s an interesting person and a good speaker and he knows how stories work, and I just feel like he’s be really interesting to meet.
3. Garth Nix. The Old Kingdom trilogy is embedded deep – very deep – in my heart, and the man is clearly very switched-on when it comes to YA. His heroines are badass and independent and achingly real, and the worlds he creates are so vividly detailed, and, well. Meeting him would be awesome, is what I am trying to say.
4. Adam Roberts. I will admit that I have a slightly ulterior motive for this one. Roberts writes for Strange Horizons, which is currently in the throes of its annual fundraising drive, so go and give it money. But he’s also a very astute, funny critic, and to be honest meeting anyone from Strange Horizons would for me be like a Belieber meeting Justin Bieber, i.e. major fangirling. Yes, my idols are internet critics with a sideline in intelligent science fiction. What of it?
5. Catherynne Valente. Again, she’d just be a fascinating person to meet. She’s incredibly switched-on about diversity, she understands how stories work, and she’s just a great writer with all kinds of clever ideas.
6. China Mieville. I recently found out that the Resident Grammarian works with someone vaguely related to Mieville, which completely blew my mind. And imagine meeting Mieville…
7. William Blake. Blake was a fascinating writer – well, artist, really – full of strange contradictions. He was, in fact, a visionary, and yet he was unappreciated in his own lifetime. I’d love to go back in time and see the unimaginable mind and hand of this creator at work, and maybe just tell him how one day everyone would know his name. It would be like Vincent and the Doctor, except without the suicide.
8. Marisha Pessl. Her books are twisty, clever, postmodern things, and it would be really interesting just to see how she does it, I guess.
9. Naomi Novik. Napoleonic fantasy with dragons. Dark, rooted fairytales full of corruption and feminism. Where does all that stuff even come from?
10. Thomas Pynchon. Just because he refuses to come out of his paper bag (that Simpsons episode, anyone?). “Everyone! I have met Reclusive Author!” That would be awesome.

(The theme for this post was suggested by the Broke and the Bookish’s weekly meme Top Ten Tuesday.)