Sixteen authors

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Sixteen authors/poets who have always influenced you and will always stick with you. List the first 16 you can recall in no more than 16 minutes, and they don't have to be listed in order of relevance to you.

[Okay, mine aren't going to be authors who have "always" influenced me, because none of those exist. Also, I may have changed it to 16 because I thought of 16 and couldn't choose which one to delete.]

1. John Green- for the obvious, nerdfighteria, and for Looking for Alaska, probably my favorite non-Hunger Games book I've ever read. (update: now especially for The Fault in Our Stars)

2. Suzanne Collins- for The Hunger Games and for stalking me to create the most relatable main character I've ever come across (okay, so she's not relatable to most people), and for Peeta Mellark, the personification of hope and strength and imperfection-perfection [a new term I have just coined to express how someone's imperfections just make them more perfect]. Also for making me appreciate dandelions.

3. Laurie Halse Anderson- for Speak, which I just finished reading, and for acknowledging that it's not okay to keep young people ignorant about certain harsh realities.

4. Stephanie Perkins- for Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door and teaching me that it is possible to write "chick-lit" that people don't have to be ashamed that they love, and for Cricket Bell. And for being a normal human being who just happens to write pretty, pretty words.

5. E. Lockhart- for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and all its amusing and despicable characters, and its feminism and awesomeness.

6. Maureen Johnson- for being totally, completely, irrepressibly weird. And for being the second-prettiest Green brother.

7. F. Scott Fitzgerald- for The Great Gatsby and pointing out that RECKLESSNESS IS STUPID.

8. J.K. Rowling- for Harry Potter, obviously, and all the things that go along with this creation. Also for Neville Longbottom.

9. Nathaniel Hawthorne- for criticizing organized religion, i.e. The Scarlet Letter; Young Goodman Brown

10. Gayle Forman- for If I Stay and, even more, Where She Went. And for standing up for YA and The Hunger Games in the face of the anti-dark-and-twisty.

11. Deb Caletti- for The Nature of Jade and the adorableness of Sebastian and Bo, and especially for Wild Roses because of my personal experience with a stepfather who has PTSD/paranoia/depression.

12. Mark Twain- for not standing for hypocrisy; i.e. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

13. Harper Lee- for To Kill a Mockingbird, which I haven't read since 9th grade but should probably do again.

14. Stephenie Meyer- for giving me standards by which to measure my love stories [girl is incomplete without guy= bad, guy watches girl in her sleep= very bad], and then for finally (kind of) living up to them in The Host

15. Shakespeare- for being Shakespeare. I didn't like reading your stuff, but I liked the stuff itself. Does that even make sense? Oh, and for Shakespearean insults. I can't get enough.

16. J.D. Salinger- for The Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield, who is the first character whose fear of change is just as bad as, if not worse than mine.