Posted by on Jan 3, 2009 in Books, Life, Writing | 4 comments

Some people have fantasy football. I have a fantasy writers’ group—writing sages who have touched me deeply and who I look to as mentors and models. I’ve never met any of these women in the flesh, but I have met their hearts and minds through the words they put down on paper, and each one inspires me in a unique way. Here they are:

  • Dorothy Dunnett, the incomparable, creator of Francis Crawford of Lymond
  • Rumer Godden, whose luminous In This House of Brede is one of my favorite books of all time
  • Elizabeth Goudge, who wrote with shining grace of England past and present, the countryside, the houses, the families
  • Angela Thirkell, wry and dry and funny and pointed, who makes me long to be a duke’s prosaic daughter
  • Gladys Taber, countrywoman, animal lover, home cook and chronicler of wonderful Stillmeadow
  • Julian of Norwich, fourteenth-century English anchoress and mystic, visionary and eternal optimist

A list like this is revealing—clearly I am a romantic, a bit of an Anglophile, a devotée of history and a lover of nature. If you could choose from every writer since the beginning of time, who would be in your imaginary writers’ group?

4 Comments

  1. 1-4-2009
    otherlisa says:

    This is kind of weird, but Ernest Hemingway, Ursula Le Guin and Joan Didion.

  2. 1-4-2009
    Elizabeth says:

    Weird combinations are the best. What a fun dinner party that would make. I wonder what Ernest would make of Joan. Heh.

  3. 1-4-2009
    Bryn Greenwood says:

    I love the idea of “fantasy writers group.” I’ll have to steal Ursula K. LeGuin from Lisa, and I’ll add: Margaret Atwood, Mary Renault, and George Saunders.

  4. 1-6-2009
    otherlisa says:

    We can share Ursula!

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