I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.
People like Ian McEwan and Jonathan Franzen completely bore me.
I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.
I've had a somewhat typical experience in that many of the contemporary writers I was exposed to early on were white and often male.
I love Joyce Carol Oates. I love Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle. Arthur Phillips is always consistent.
The influence of cinema on all contemporary writers is undeniable. Because film is such a powerful and popular art form, we prose writers think cinematically.
The two contemporary writers whom I consider as role models are Janet Malcolm and Michael Lewis.
I couldn't choose a favourite author, but two contemporary writers who have never disappointed me are Tim Winton and Alice Munro.
I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.
Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.
You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.
I lay off a lot modern fiction and only rely on living writers for non-fiction work.
Jim Harrison is someone I always enjoy, one of the great contemporary writers. I like Tim Ferris' Big Boom Theory. I'm getting into a different kind of reading, not straight novels.
I do think that the modern India does belong to writers who are living in India.
