Charles Baxter,
author of The Feast of Love

"More people should be reading the fiction and poetry of Lars Gustafsson, which is extravagantly smart and beautiful. They should be reading the work of Javier Marais, of Sylvia Townsend Warner—especially her letters—and certainly they should be reading the work of William Maxwell, whose work in its quality and range of feeling would be a model for any writer."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Charles Baxter.

Madison Smartt Bell,
author of Master of the Crossroads

"Probably the most underappreciated novelists are the ones who just can't get their books published at all. As a teaching writer, I know about lots of these! So I'll just pick (from lots of choices) one great book that (maddeningly) has never found a publisher: The Beating by Craig Bernardini."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Madison Smartt Bell.

Michael Dibdin,
author of Thanksgiving

Dibdin: Almost anyone who's dead and doesn't have an agent, to quote Polanski on why Shakespeare didn't get a credit in his film of Macbeth. Writers who can't be interviewed and put on tour are invisible in our culture. Some names? All right, Penelope Fitzgerald, Flann O'Brien, Patricia Highsmith, Lawrence Durrell, Georges Simenon...I could go on.

WAG: Who do you think is the best under-appreciated writer working today?

Dibdin: Apart from me, you mean? Actually, I don't think under-appreciation is what writers working today suffer from. Rather the reverse.

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Michael Dibdin.

Robert Drewe,
author of The Shark Net

Drewe: I admire the work of Barry Hannah, the Mississippi writer. I think he's hilarious, very clever and edgy and blackly comic. I've used his stories in two international short story collections I've edited, The Picador Book of the Beach and The Penguin Book of the City.

WAG: And who do you think is the best under-appreciated writer working today?

Drewe: Apart from myself, do you mean?

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Robert Drewe.

J.D. Dolan,
author of Phoenix

Dolan: The late Andre Dubus.

WAG: And who do you think is the best under-appreciated writer working today?

Dolan: Mark Richard.

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with J.D. Dolan.

Rhian Ellis,
author of After Life

"Most writers are neglected, I think—it's rare that I can go to a party and talk about books; it's easier to talk about movies, if for no other reason than two random people are more likely to have watched the same movies than to have read the same books. I haven't read so many things my friends tell me to; and, for example, Philip Roth's The Human Stain was brilliant, but I can't get anyone else to read it. Maybe you can tell I don't get on the Internet much...

"Diane Johnson's novels are terrific—funny and tightly plotted and full of good characters ("The Shadow Knows," for example). I tell everyone to read "The World as I Found It" by Bruce Duffy. As far as who is the most under-appreciated writers working today, I'd suggest Lydia Davis (the woman's totally brilliant and no one pays any attention) and Stephen Dixon (a lot people find him unreadable, but much of his work is brilliant)."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Rhian Ellis.

Penelope Evans,
author of First Fruits

"Favorite writers? Can anyone answer that? At the moment I'm obsessed with Haruki Murakami. I mentioned him at a crime writers conference once and the panel hissed, 'He's mainstream.' Now I would say he was the quintessential thriller writer, but obviously people don't agree. Other writers? Carl Hiaasen, Patricia Highsmith, Tom Savage."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Penelope Evans.

Thomas Mallon,
author of Two Moons

"Louis MacNeice is one of my favorite poets of the twentieth century, and I wish he were at least as well known to today's readers as his contemporaries (Auden, Spender) usually are. Among current novelists, Charles Baxter, whose new book The Feast of Love will soon be published, strikes me as a writer who deserves a bigger audience than the appreciative one he already has."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Thomas Mallon.

Iain Pears,
author of An Instance of the Fingerpost

"My obscure authors keep on being discovered. I began reading the Patrick O'Brian naval stories years ago as well as Robertson Davies, but neither of these can be called unrecognised any more. I even gave a Harry Potter to a Godchild before he made Madonna seem like an unknown. Delightful for the authors, and well-deserved, of course—but I always feel ever so slightly betrayed when one of my private joys becomes public property like that..."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with Iain Pears.

George Saunders,
author of Pastoralia

"I'm not sure that these guys are really underappreciated, but I love Isaac Babel and Henry Green—two of the great writers of the century and probably not always acknowledged as such.

"I consider almost all of my favorite younger contemporary writers to be underappreciated, since I think they should all be given mansions and free computers and full refrigerators and told to go go go. So that list would include, among many others, and in no particular order: Ben Marcus, David Foster Wallace, Paul Griner, Dave Eggers, Mary Caponegro, Rick Moody, Arthur Flowers, Lee Durkee, Mark Sundeen, Junot Diaz, Chris Offut, Julia Slavin, Paula Saunders (my wife), Brooks Haxton, Michael Burkard, Kevin Canty, Edwidge Danticat, Larry Brown, Nicholson Baker....I could go on and on..."

Click here to read the complete WAG interview with George Saunders.