Moss, of the division Bryophyta.

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.