"Wanda was my mentor and has such a sharp, vicious, lyrical voice, her poems almost come off the page and sing to you. I revisit this book often. Wanda was and is considered the voice of Los Angeles. She wrote about everything from growing up in the tough neighborhood of Watts California, to writing for a soap opera, to the objectification and marginalization of not only being a woman, but a woman of color."

"After the sudden death of her father, Helen Macdonald managed her grief by taming a goshawk. The wild un-language of grief finds expression here. And there’s more; our relationship with creatures not us. How we read the past without re-writing it. How we learn to love – and why we might not want to do that. Painful, remarkable, redemptive, this book hovers over my heart and suddenly drops on it. Caught."

"Published just before he died of AIDS, Wojnarowicz’s memoir is a classic of outlaw literature and political fury. Wojnarowicz — who was a great artist as well as writer — wheels through his wickedly difficult childhood, the deaths of friends and lovers, great sex writing, thoughts about art, screeds against the likes of Jesse Helms, all the while facing down his own imminent demise. It’s sad, funny, angry and transporting, a kaleidoscope on fire."

"This album was introduced to me by John Legend who actually played the title song for me while we were writing—he played it on the piano and sang it at first. It was so striking, I said, 'What is that?" And then he played me the actual record and it instantly became a favorite for me. The way her voice breaks is so moving. She totally caught pure honesty and that's inspiring."

"My father in law, Victor Levenstein, just finished writing his own memoirs about his early life and surviving torture and forced labor in the Gulags. He met Solzhenitsyn while in exile and was in the same camp that is described in “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. I found this book to be deeply profound in observing humans at their absolute worst while never missing the big story of human nature."

"If I had to choose just one Wilco album to own this would be it if I could only be it. As consistently good as they are, there is something undeniably unique about this record. The song writing it beautiful but the production is what takes it over the top. Handled differently the record would be simply a fantastic indie folk record, but the strangely textured recording raises it up to become something entirely other."

"Who can really understand Bowles’ writing? Well, some people can, but not I. Nonetheless I love it, and it has the irrefutable hyper-reality of dreams. Only a very few other writers (Denis Johnson is one) have used American English with such exactitude and so cracklingly, have observed so fearlessly the emotional abysses that confront us, and are so deliriously funny. Claire Messud’s introduction to the recent Ecco edition is eloquent and insightful."