Eight MacArthur Fellows on World Book Day

Today is World Book Day, an opportunity to highlight writers and their work!

Many MacArthur Fellows are poets, writers, novelists and critics. They are creatives who analyze critical issues, tell compelling stories that have yet to be told, and help us make sense of the world around us.

So we put together some quotes from eight MacArthur Fellows to commemorate this day.

Who are your favorite authors?

“I love books. I have a kind of book fetish — I don’t think that’s gonna stop. I’m not very moralistic when it comes to commodification.”–Fred Moten, Cultural Theorist and Poet

“The writing of a novel can sometimes become a novel itself. I like to read people’s diaries and letters. If you read someone’s diary and they mention someone, then you trace that person, it’s like a chain reaction.”–Yiyun Li, Fiction Writer

“With short stories it feels possible to hop across time zones and zip into new skins; also to take risks that I think would prove unsustainable for the length of a novel. World-building is such a pleasure for me, as a writer and as a reader, and I love story collections because they feel like a miniature universe, with all these interrelated worlds-in-progress.”–Karen Russell, Fiction Writer

“Should I have written a zombie novel? It made perfect sense to me. I grew up loving horror movies and then horror fiction…if it gives me pleasure, if it’s exciting, you know, our time on earth is pretty short. I should be doing what I feel like I should be doing.”–Colson Whitehead, Writer

“I think what I’m always looking for is some door in the story that opens on another world. A doorway like that can be a religious experience.”–Stuart Dybek, Short Story Writer

“One thing that I did not expect was that the writing of a novel would start to haunt me. You know, you open up a portal of an entire world, and, before you know it, your periphery is haunted by that world. And I just kept thinking about these characters and this world and where they’re coming from, and I was living half in this world and half in another.”–Ocean Vuong, Poet and Fiction Writer

“I make stuff. I try to fill the time with my own sense of productivity, like working on a single sentence for a month. I think that’s an excellent way to spend spare time these days.”–Terrance Hayes, Poet

“I sometimes go back and read my own fiction if I’m divorced enough from it. I’ve basically got a terrible memory, so I’ve forgotten good chunks of the Inheritance trilogy. I’m periodically surprised by things that happen in the story and I’m like, This is amazing! And then I realize, Oh, wait, I wrote this.”–N. K. Jemisin, Speculative Fiction Writer