Leopoldine Core: Nella Larsen’s radical Passing and other influences on When Watched
Sarah Pinsker: Octavia Butler, Woody Guthrie, and other classics that inspired my debut
Shangyang Fang: Hearing the “meticulous music” in contemporary American poetry
Lev Grossman on Ernest Hemingway, verbal membrane, and The Sun Also Rises
Shane McCrae: My war with John Ashbery
Amit Majmudar: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian reminds me of how “more can be more”
Lysley Tenorio: Bharati Mukherjee as catalyst and inspiration
Deborah Baker on Lafcadio Hearn and “the Orient at home”
Viet Thanh Nguyen: We still live in Ralph Ellison’s moment
About what could be: C. D. Wright’s impact on Patrick Johnson’s Gatekeeper
Jeffrey Colvin: The wide-ranging influences that helped inspire Africaville
Lauren Groff on the “profound generosity” of James Salter
Baldwin and Merwin: Matthew Zapruder’s guiding spirits in Father’s Day
Kimberly King Parsons salutes Eileen Myles, Denis Johnson, and other voices she “would follow anywhere”
Liza Wieland: From Dickinson to Mary Oliver, a lineage of poets behind Paris, 7 A.M.
Forrest Gander: Writing from the edge of the abyss—the books that influenced Be With