Shanthi Sekaran on time and received magic: Beloved’s gifts to Lucky Boy
Vanessa Hua: Kindred spirits in the heroines of Little Women and the Little House books
Leopoldine Core: Nella Larsen’s radical Passing and other influences on When Watched
Shawn Vestal: The genius of Henry James’s “exquisitely repressed” The Ambassadors
Putting the alternate in alternate history: Whitman, Poe, and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”
Dismiss Kurt Vonnegut’s “modest, winking profundity” at your own peril, says Ron Currie, Jr.
Sandra Simonds: Plath, Ginsberg, and an “urgently necessary” personal canon
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: Isaac Bashevis Singer’s world is my own
Luc Sante takes a “headlong plunge” into the lives of nineteenth-century American poets
Playwright-turned-novelist Kirk Lynn on Joe Brainard, James Thurber, and other influences on Rules for Werewolves
Sara Jaffe: From James Baldwin to Lynne Tillman—four influences on Dryland
Alexandra Kleeman: Philip K. Dick’s “gnostic logic” and other influences on You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
Amitava Kumar: Philip Roth teaches me to be a bit more honest
Annie Liontas: Influences, identity, and what defines the “self-respecting immigrant novel”
“A quintessential black literary hero” and other influences on Jabari Asim’s first novel
Viet Thanh Nguyen: We still live in Ralph Ellison’s moment
