13. My favourite writer
There's no such thing. I have writers in different genres who I enjoy, and whom I'll probably follow for a long time to come; I have ones I've lost, but love still.
Terry Pratchett validated my sense of humour growing up. I can't read him anymore but nothing will ever change how he shaped me. I owe a lot of the way I view migration and passage and a mobile sense of nationalism to Bruce Chatwin. William Dalrymple is endlessly fascinating and his books are an education on things I keep thinking I should already know. I own everything Sharon Olds has ever written and always will. I love Katherine Mansfield, and Janet Frame -- all the haunted, fey women New Zealand keeps producing; long may they prosper. Bill Bryson is the funniest man alive. When Eloisa James is on form she writes the best historical romances money can buy. No-one writes two men fucking like KA Mitchell.
There's no such thing as a favourite writer. There's moments in time when one might soothe away the weariness better than the others, but that's a temporary singularity. They've all performed that function; I owe them all.