Every writer began as a reader, a brilliant new photo feature from New York Magazine's The Cut reminds us. The Cut photographed and interviewed five acclaimed women authors, each embodying a favorite literary character, in a piece on "literary heroines" appearing in the Nov. 16 issue of the magazine.
We may know Hanya Yanagihara as the author of this year's melancholy epic A Little Life, and Angela Flournoy as the scribe behind breakout novel The Turner House -- both finalists for the National Book Award in Fiction, which will be awarded this week.
But did you know Yanagihara feels a special connection to Tom Ripley, the scheming social climber of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley? "The villains," she told The Cut, "are always the characters the author has the most fun writing."
Flournoy, on the other hand, was profoundly affected by Toni Morrison's classic Sula. "The first time I read it, I had never really read a book that was pretty plainly just about black female friendship," she recalled.
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