My hundred most influential writers (for now): the final list

1.     Dr. Seuss

2.     Russell and Lillian Hoban

3.     Maurice Sendak

4.     Tomie diPaola

5.     Laura Ingalls Wilder

6.     Horatio Alger, Jr.

7.     Shel Silverstein

8.     Hans Christian Anderson

9.     The Brothers Grimm

10.  Bible authors and editors (including King James)

11.  Virginia Hamilton

12.  The d’Aulaires

13.  Roald Dahl

14.  Natalie Babbitt

15.  Louis Sachar

16.  Frances Hodgson Burnett

17.  Robert McCloskey

18.  E.B. White

19.  Louise Fitzhugh

20.  Betty McDonald

21.  Astrid Lindgren

22.  Beverly Cleary

23.  Carol Ryrie Brink

24.  Booth Tarkington

25.  Lewis Carroll

26.  C.S. Lewis

27.  Lynda Barry

28.  Louisa May Alcott

29.  Katherine Paterson

30.  Scott O’Dell

31.  Shakespeare

32.  Madeline L’Engle

33.  Lois Lowry

34.  Paula Danziger

35.  Judy Blume

36.  Lois Duncan

37.  Antoine de Saint Exupery

38. Anne Frank

39.  Mark Twain

40.  The “anonymous” author of Go Ask Alice

41.  Dylan Thomas

42.  George Orwell

43.  Ray Bradbury

44.  Charles Dickens

45.  Charles Baxter

46.  Tracy Kidder

47.  James Baldwin

48.  Douglas Adams

49.  J.D. Salinger

50.  John Steinbeck

51.  F. Scott Fitzgerald

52. Flannery O'Connor

53. Sandra Cisneros

54. Oscar Wilde 

55.  Tom Stoppard

56.  Samuel Beckett

57.  Sophocles

58.  Gabriel García Márquez

59.  Alice Walker

60.  Tom Robbins

61.  Erica Jong

62.  Franz Kafka

63.  Margaret Atwood

64.  Grace Paley

65.  Jamaica Kincaid

66.  August Wilson

67.  Kurt Vonnegut

68.  Joseph Heller

69.  Tony Kushner

70.  Sherman Alexie

71.  Cindy Crabb

72.  Toni Morrison

73. Sarah Schulman

74.  Maxine Hong Kingston

75.  bell hooks

76.  Louise Erdrich

77.  Rebecca Brown

78.  Junot Diaz

79.  E. Annie Proulx

80.  Raymond Carver

81.  Stuart Dybek

82.  Ron Hansen

83.  Angela Davis

84.  Audre Lorde

85.  Alice Munro

86.  Walter Dean Myers

87.  Thomas Kuhn

88.  George Saunders

89.  Lucille Clifton

90.  Octavia Butler

91.  Andrea Barrett

92.  Charles Simic

93.  Jacqueline Woodson

94.  Yusef Komunyakaa

95.  Chris Crutcher

96.  Lisa Delpit

97. Neil Gaiman 

98.  Joan Didion

99.  Anne Carson

100. Jonathan Swift
 
I am finishing up issue #1 of a real-life paper zine about this list, entitled The Hundred Most Influential Writers in My Life to Date, As Best I Can Remember and Mostly Not Including Zines. Blogs are great, they do their job, but I think a paper zine is the ideal format for this project. If you'd like a copy, please email me for more info.