What do writers read?  Over the life of Etude we’ve asked this question in a variety of ways and received a variety of responses:  from classic literary nonfiction writers like John McPhee and George Orwell to novelists John Steinbeck and Garrison Keillor to the poets --Levertov, Eugenio Montale, Langston Hughes.  If brilliant writers are inspired by reading, then perhaps all of us can find inspiration in what they read.  Here are the questions – and responses – from nine literary nonfiction writers.

Ted Conover

Who do you read? Who are your favorite authors?

One of my favorite authors is George Orwell. John Steinbeck, Bruce Chatwin, Robert Stone, Tracy Kidder. I read a lot of fiction because often that is where you find the best storytelling. There's a great new book by Adrian Nicole Leblanc, Random Family, her work is an inspiration for me -- her persistence and the intimacy she achieves just through incredible commitment to her subjects. She's amazing.

I love Susan Orlean as a stylist -- not all nonfiction writing has to be about profound and serious subjects. She is a perfect example of how life is not all gravity -- nor is it silly. I like her a lot.

Barbara Ehrenreich

What is on your bedside table right now? What are some of your favorite books? Favorite authors?

I'm not a big one for favorites. I read a lot of novels. I don't really even remember what the most recent ones are. Right now I’m reading a wonderful novel called The Fountain at the Center of the World. It is a left-wing novel on anti-globalization themes. And if you had told me that, I'd probably have said, "oh snooze" -- but it's gripping, it's beautifully written and it's the best novel I've read this year. Most of my nonfiction reading unfortunately is either functional or predatory. Functional in that I have been asked to do a blurb for something; predatory in that I'm doing research for something I'm working on, and I'm skimming through to the relevant parts. I'm very ashamed of myself that I don't do more nonfiction reading just out of calm curiosity.

Gretel Ehrlich

Who do you read? Who moves you?

Lately I’ve been reading translations from medieval Chinese Buddhist poetry, by Red Pines, who’s actually an American monk. I read a lot of things from Asia, both Japan and China. I read all the 20th century American and Irish and South American writers, poets.

Ann Fadiman

Whom do you read? What books are you reading right now? What are your favorite books? Who are your favorite writers?

I wish I had time to read as much as I used to before I became editor of the Scholar seven years ago. Most of my reading time is spent with unsolicited manuscripts. During the last year, among newly published books, my favorites were Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, both marvelous examples of literary journalism. I couldn't name my favorite books unless you allotted several hundred pages for my response, and for similar reasons I think I'd better restrict my favorite writers to just a couple of genres, the ones I practice myself. They include A. J. Liebling and John McPhee (reportage) and Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and E. B. White (essays).

Melissa Fay Greene

What are some of your favorite books? Who do you respect as writers?

The writers I READ, on a regular basis, before sitting down to write in the morning, include: Homer, Chaucer, Robert Browning, and Saul Bellow. I also read poetry, being especially fond of Robert Lowell, Stanley Kunitz, Seamus Heaney, Sharon Olds, Howard Nemerov, Wislawa Szymborska, and Langston Hughes.

Adam Hotchkiss

What are you currently reading?  What writers have had the most influence on your style or choices of topics?

I just a few days ago finished Gabriel García Márquez’s wonderful autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale. For my pleasure reading, though, I read more fiction than non-fiction. I’m always trying to learn about craft when I read, and I think there’s more to be learned from novelists and short story writers than from journalists. The latter can find an audience if they impart useful information. But fiction writers need to hold our attention by how skillfully they tell the story. As to fiction writers whose work I’ve loved, I think Tolstoy and Chekhov are at the top of the list. And I like certain modern writers who have Tolstoy’s ambition to interweave the social fabric of a time and place with personal drama: Pat Barker on World War I, Paul Scott on the last days of the British in India, E. L. Doctorow on American life. And there are many more.

Tracy Kidder

Who do you read? What are you reading right now?

I read a variety of things, fiction, nonfiction, poetry -- whatever comes my way. I'm reading a number of books -- at the same time -- The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil -- it is an enormous tome, not exactly my favorite novel, but I keep coming back to it. I read pretty eclectically. More and more I am reading poetry. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to learn Italian, and now I read a lot of the Italian poet Eugenio Montale, a Nobel Prize winner. I'm also reading Garrison Keillor's last novel and Caroline Alexander's The Bounty -- she does such wonderful job writing about Captain Bligh's reputation and how it got so distorted.

Mary Roach

What are you reading these days?

I’m in this phase where I’m getting a lot of requests to blurb books, and I try to do that, because the whole blurbing process was so stressful for me. Consequently, when people ask me to write one, I like to try to do that for people.

So right now on my reading table is a book by Elizabeth Royte called Garbage Land, about garbage, and a book about great white sharks, The Devil’s Teeth, by Susan Casey. And Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, which I haven’t succeeded in getting into yet. I’ve been told it’s an amazing book, and I have to read it.

Terry Tempest Williams

What writers feed you?

The poets. Levertov, Merwin, Kinnell, Rich, Rexroth, Snyder, Emily Dickinson, Japanese haiku, Tomaz Salamun, Homero Aridjis, Jane Hirshfield. Have you seen the collection Sam Hamill inspired, Poets Against the War? Deeply moving. The essayists and storytellers: Kundera, Breytenbach, Stegner, Susan Griffin, Maxine Hong Kingston (her new book, The Fifth Book of Peace, is stunning), Ed Abbey, Thoreau, Emerson, Louise Erdrich, Alex Kotlowitz, Joe Klein, Susan Sontag, Italo Calvino, John Berger, Clarice Lispector, Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, younger writers like John D’Agata and Rebecca Solnit. The list could go on forever. I’m in the middle of reading Nicholson Baker’s A Box of Matches. I love anything that lights the imagination and bows to ideas.