"His book, Black Coffee Blues, was probably the book that most influenced The Road Beneath My Feet. It was written between the late eighties and early nineties whilst Henry was on the road. The idea of writing an actual autobiography at my age seems quite repulsive to me, but tour diaries is a different thing as it’s not just about you but about the experiences and memories of playing shows around the world, both for you and the fans. Black Coffee Blues is the best book I’ve read like this and was a huge influence, both thematically and structurally."

"My Cousin Vinny. No doubt about it. Classic movie, never have seen Joe Pesci or Marisa Tomei better. Everybody was great. The writing was great. It just goes to show you how character-driven movies are always the best, for me. I love character-driven, well-written, great storytelling types of films and I think that My Cousin Vinny just hit the nail on the head with everything. It’s one of those movies that, if I’m flipping through the channels, no matter what part it’s on, I can watch it. It’s just one of my favorites."

"To me, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the funniest movie ever made. There are influences in this film that caused me to write Black Dynamite. I’m such a Monty Python Fan. I think that the layers of humor go from absurdly silly to very intellectual and then you have the physical humor on top of that. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie as physically and mentally funny with the brilliance of satire and political humor underneath it. This movie is just so layered, and again it is what influenced me in writing Black Dynamite."

"I’m not sure it was a present but it was certainly given to me, and it’s had a lasting impact on my writing life. It was Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. I was around 14, we were up on Cape Cod for a few weeks over the summer, and a librarian at this tiny library saw me rummaging through the paperback bin. She had seen what I had been reading and she reached in and took out the Greene. And then she said, ‘Keep it, if you like it.’ I still have it. It has a rubber band around the cover."

"My dad gave me the novel Letting Go by Philip Roth. Dad read very little fiction—only one book of fiction a year. He was a political scientist, and he read dozens and dozens of non-fiction, academic books every year. But he always became enthusiastic about his one, annual book of fiction, which he would then recommend to everyone. He loved Roth. I like the novel, because it is Roth’s second—and unfamous—book; the writing shows his earnestness. He was looking for his voice then. I love the early novels of writers, for that same reason."

"Full disclosure: Samantha Irby is my real life actual friend, but that’s only because I was so rabidly obsessed with her perfect, brilliant, peerlessly funny writing that I flew to Chicago and forced her to love me, so I think that hardly counts as a traditional conflict of interest. I was a fan FIRST. This book doesn’t come out until March, but I was lucky enough to read an early manuscript, and it’s exactly the collection of new Samantha Irby essays you’ve been yearning for, the perfect spring promise to keep you trucking through the winter."

"I moved off-campus after my sophomore year in college and had to feed myself. My quasi-hippie roommate gave me a copy of Francis Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, permanently changing how I thought about food and introducing selfish, cloistered little me to the notion of social responsibility. I became a vegetarian, learned to bake bread, and started a garden. My daughters’ friends used to call me Mrs. Nutritious—or Martha—and I loved it. Now, if I’m not writing, I’m either growing plants or cooking them. That slim volume revolutionized my life."

"There might have been personal things in my life right here, because I wanted to strip things down. Another inspiration was a lot of country singer-songwriters. I’m friends with a guy named Terry Allen, who’s a great, very eccentric songwriter. Both of us have worked with Lucinda Williams, who everybody knows is an incredible songwriter. There’s an early group called the Flatlanders, and their first records or demos were just amazing. I was really immersed in these people who were writing very simply, as far as their musical arrangements, and very heartfelt. I was getting a lot of inspiration from them."