First, I must point out that this is not my subjective list of the “best” writers. Rather, it is a list of my “favorite” writers, which is not the same thing.

Second, this is a list of “writers,” not necessarily authors, as not all of the writers on this list have actually written a lot of books.

Third, these are all modern writers, with “modern” defined as roughly the past half-century.

Fourth, as would logically therefore follow, this list does not contain historical or classical authors like Edgar Allan Poe or Shakespeare. As a teacher of English literature, I have purposely excluded those kinds of writers, even those I like best and teach the most.

Fifth, this list is genre-diverse: fiction, sports, science, religion, horror, politics, history.

And Sixth, I tried to exclude writers who are so famous (like Stephen King, for example) who would appear on many people’s list. In that way my list is more personal and unique to me.

The best way to describe this list is to say it includes every writer I am enthusiastically compelled to read. The writers here are listed alphabetically, not in order of preference.