Favourite Writer? (playwright poet author etc.)

[The_root_of_all_evil]

HP Lovecraft.

Hrmmm..Lovecraft has a fantastic imagination, but as a writer...

Anyway;
Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, John Wyndham, H.G. Wells, Steven Moffat, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Jeffrey Deaver

Alan Moore.
World's greatest storyteller, in any medium.

Moore would be great if he laid off the Super-Sex a little.

And what did you write Darth? Amazonable?

 

[Razzle Bathbone]

Alan Moore.
World's greatest storyteller, in any medium.

Moore would be great if he laid off the Super-Sex a little.

Having read "Lost Girls", I respectfully disagree. The super-sex in that book is AWESOME. I want more. Right now.

 

[harv239]

George Orwell, certainly for 1984 and Animal Farm, but for a lesser known work even more so "Down and Out in Paris and London".
Douglas Adams, Bill Bryson, Mordechai Richler, Roddy Doyle and Frank McCourt, all for varying reasons which I won't bore you with. They're my choices, and I'll stick by that.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

Alan Moore.
World's greatest storyteller, in any medium.

Moore would be great if he laid off the Super-Sex a little.

Having read "Lost Girls", I respectfully disagree. The super-sex in that book is AWESOME. I want more. Right now.

Seconded. I can't believe I have a very expensive box set of hard-cover porn on my bookshelf, but it's Moore, so I had no choice.

My favorites:

Joanna Russ - Awesome science fiction, awesome non-fiction. She is the reason I'm a feminist, so you can go write her hate mail now.

Ursula LeGuin - can build a more living world in 150 pages than other authors can manage in an entire bloated trilogy.

Poets Emily Dickinson, Rumi, Sharon Olds, and Mary Oliver - I don't understand how anyone can be so heartbreakingly in love with ordinary life.

Pat Barker - Her "Regeneration" novels are full of clear-eyed, unsentimental compassion such as I cannot remember reading before.

John Keegan - He can make me interested in things I never even considered looking into.

 

[BlazeTheVampire]

I'm so glad to see other David Eddings fans. I started reading his books when I was pretty young (I was stuck in like 4th grade with a college reading level, so I often had huge fantasy novels while other kids were struggling through kid's books).

I have a tendency to read books from the teen genre, mostly the vampire ones- because I love vampires (obviously) and enjoy a good vampire novel, but I'm not out to read porn. Most of the adult vampiric stuff is too erotic for my tastes, so I stick to the teen stuff in that respect.

That said, my list:
David and Leigh Eddings
Melanie Rawn The Dragon Prince (series)
Stephanie Meyer Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse- they're making a "Twilight" movie, actually.
Neil Gaiman
Tamora Pierce (between her and Eddings, I can't tell who brought me more into the fantasy genre)
Douglas Adams

And I had a lot more respect for J.K Rowling before the epilogue of book 7. The fact that she had to fill in the blanks at interviews pissed me off. If it had been all that important, it would have been in the novels. I still claim the fifth book as her best of the series, hands-down. Even with Harry's sudden turn to being emo, it was the best written.

Darth, you're published? I'm trying but failing miserably, lol.

 

[St Puglo]

Margaret Atwood has to be one of my favorites. Oryx and Crake is one of the best science fiction books of all time.

For non-fiction, Douglas Hofstadter is the rawest of the raw.

 

[Blandotaco]

Lovecraft

 

[le machin]

My number one writer would be George Orwell. I have read more of his works than I have of any three other authors combined. My personal favorites that I would recommend are Homage to Catalonia and The Road to Wigan Pier. I would consider these the best of his body of nonfiction works.

I also like Canadian author Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake, Blind Assassin) and Czech-French author Milan Kundera (Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ignorance), both of whom are good at creating emotionally powerful and morally challenging works.

 

[Sylocat]

From the ones already mentioned:

Neil Gaiman
Douglas Adams (except for book 5 of the Hitchhiker series)
Kurt Vonnegut, jr.
Stephen King (even though he's admitted in interviews that he makes up all of his stories as he goes along)
Ursula K. LeGuin
J. K. Rowling (forgiving the Disney Ending)

And for novelists who haven't been mentioned yet (which is a crime), look up:

E. L. Konigsburg, who can use subtlety like no other author (I challenge anyone here to read Father's Arcane Daughter and claim that it's not a masterpiece)
Michael Chabon. The film adaptation of Wonder Boys is a woefully under-appreciated little gem, but his real masterwork is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (which will have a special significance to fans of a magazine called "The Escapist").
Peter S. Beagle, best known for The Last Unicorn but I like his other stuff even better. I of coure have to mention him because he's a friend of my father's, which makes it a little awkward recommending his work, but he's still a master.

Which reminds me, I feel obligated to also recommend Into the Light, by Alex Hancock, because... well... the author is my dad ^_^; (in all seriousness, it's actually pretty good)

Writers in other mediums (the OP said playwrights and stuff were welcome too):

William Shakespeare (obvious choice, but still)
Joss Whedon (ATTENTION: if you think that all Joss Whedon can write is one-liners, I have an assignment for you: Watch episode 16 of season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the episode entitled "The Body"). You don't have to have seen any other episodes of the show, just rent the DVD and watch that one episode from start to finish. That's an order.)
Steven Moffat, and YEAH!!! [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/20/bbc.television2] And double yeah [http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=37909]!
Jeff Smith. I think the Bone comics may be the greatest comic book series by a single author ever. Both the story and art are phenomenal, and he kept the series going singlehandedly for ten years. Ten. Years.
Yahtzee Croshaw (sorry)

 

[Johnnyweird]

The Russian master, the ultimate climax of all human culture and art: Fyodor Dostoevsky

This man writes books that contain 90% dialogue/monolgue and still manages to make them impossible to turn down. Sometimes it can take a day to read two three pages, or to understand them atleast.

Yes. I thank you for posting this.

My favorite of all time is Phillip K Dick. His books are just so mind-blowing. I love idea-novels, books that are about a specific theme or concept, and, just like Dostoevsky, PKD is a master of that. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, Ubik, Man in the High Tower, all classics.

I also like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Shame he had to die. So it goes.

I'm a big fan of dystopian fiction, so George Orwell is up there, as well as Aldous Huxley and Yevgeny Zamyatin.

 

[Jarhed]

H.P. Lovecraft is the greatest

 

[Sylocat]

I'm a big fan of dystopian fiction, so George Orwell is up there, as well as Aldous Huxley and Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Of course, I forgot Yevgeny Zamyatin. Quite possibly the most influential science fiction author of all time.

 

[Kermi]

Off the top of my head: Robert Heinlein for his philosophy, Timothy Zahn for his space opera and Neal Stephenson for his... well just how do you define a book like Cryptonomicon, anyway?

Hmm, all sci-fi authors. Interesting.

Upon reflection: Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, but for some reason they always slip my mind when someone asks me who I like. Maybe because they're such obvious answers - everyone I know likes their work, though I seem to be the only one who likes Adams' Dirk Gently stories more than his Hitch-hiker's books.

 

[stompy]

Orwell, Huxley, Rand, and Coben.

 

[Uskis]

Jan guillou is an amazing writer. I don't know how much of his stuff has been translated into english (i guess most of it). He's responsible for the series about the knight templar Arn, which is really brilliant. He also wrote the long running series about coq rouge or Hamilton. A series more or less about a swedish version of james bond, with some really great social comment on the swedish secret services and society in general. He also did "Onskan" or "Evil" which was made into a rather great movie of the same name.

ANother great writer I think is Burnie Burns, the main guy behind the Red vs. Blue series. (I think so.. it's what it says in the credits)
I think he did a great job in making a really fun series with a very limited visual side. The writing is so good, I don't really wach the show anymore, as much as i put it one while i clean the house or cook or something. The comic timing is nothing short of outstanding.

 

[Saskwach]

John Keegan - He can make me interested in things I never even considered looking into.

He does do that well doesn't he?
I also note the Orwell love. That's touching.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Alan Moore.
World's greatest storyteller, in any medium.

Moore would be great if he laid off the Super-Sex a little.

Having read "Lost Girls", I respectfully disagree. The super-sex in that book is AWESOME. I want more. Right now.

I enjoyed Lost Girls, but he was a little too hung up on that weird sex in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, I mean come on, yet I get it, sex, get over it and get back to my referential steam-punk adventure! But no, just more weird sex.

 

[Saskwach]

Alan Moore.
World's greatest storyteller, in any medium.

Moore would be great if he laid off the Super-Sex a little.

Having read "Lost Girls", I respectfully disagree. The super-sex in that book is AWESOME. I want more. Right now.

I enjoyed Lost Girls, but he was a little too hung up on that weird sex in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, I mean come on, yet I get it, sex, get over it and get back to my referential steam-punk adventure! But no, just more weird sex.

I think you have to say that the Black Dossier was more about the weird in general than just the weird sex. Besides, the weird sex in that book was hilariously entertaining.