Kay... time to actually work on this page ;-) These are the authors who have either seriously gotten me hooked on their writing, and/or who influence me in my own writing. Some of them will have websites, others won't but only cause I don't know what they are yet *L*. Anyhow, hope you pick up some of these people's stuff and enjoy it!

Anne McCaffery-a great sci-fi author! My favorite series she has done is that of Pern. She has recently won the 1999 Margaret A. Edwards Award, becoming the first science fiction writer to win this lifetime achievement award. There is an article about it in the June 1999 issue of School Library Journal, so if you see it, pick it up! Miss McCaffery has written numerous other books including The Ship Who Sang, and Dragonriders of Pern. She is also the first woman to win the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award (woo hoo! :-). She is an awesome writer and an awesome lady, at least that's my opinion. My own congratulations for all of her achievements!

Lucille Clifton-a wonderful poetess. I took a class on American Women writers, and Lucille Clifton was a refreshing change in the pattern of themes. Most of the women writers wrote of the suffering and horribleness of being a women, and I found it so depressing that most of the women characters in those stories killed themselves. Miss Clifton expressed her pride in being a woman through some of her poetry and that was a very pleasant change (as you can well imagine :-). We watched a video on her, and that is when I wrote one of my poems. I can't say exactly what about her inspired it, but something did and my pen flew furiously across my paper :-). Her poems are strong and very much worth the read!

Emily Dickinson- What to say about Emily Dickinson... I love her! *laughs* Her poetry is so... her own. The way she uses punctuation, like capitalizing words that normally wouldn't be... not sticking with the "traditional" rules of punctuation... that gives her poetry life, and gives the reader a sense of how she saw things, so that her interpretation of the poem is the poem almost. Some find her poetry hard to read and understand, and it is, in part because of the freedom from the grammatical rules... but I see her poems as an open window into who she was, as poems are for those who write them.

William Shakespeare- Ah the Bard himself. Only wish I could write half as well as him... but then my writing really wouldn't be mine... I adore Shakespeare...I love to pore over his plays, read the lines aloud and let the words trip over my tongue. I don't always understand him *laughs* but the music and beauty of the language in which he wrote is... WOW! His sonnets especially... I'm no scholar nor an expert on Shakespeare.. in fact I might say I'm rather ignorant in this regard... *laughs* but I am of the opinion that Shakespeare was and still is one of the world's greatest writers.