Recently I have been teaching a course on essay writing for Kahini. While I was preparing I became concerned that my own essay reading might be too narrow so I put a request on Twitter for people to tell me their favourite essays or essayists.

It was too good a list to keep to myself.

In no particular order, and with no endorsements or credits for the suggestions, here are the essayists my Twitter network provided:

Eula Biss

Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering, a collection

Joan Didion

Annie Dillard

Jenni Diski

David Foster Wallace

Helen Garner

Natalia Ginzburg

Mark Greif, Against Everything

Jay Griffiths

Siri Hustvedt . ++

Paul Kingsnorth

Barbara Kingsolver

Kei Miller

Andrew O’Hagan, The Secret Life, a collection, and The Tower

George Orwell

Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca Solnit

John Jeremiah Sullivan

James Wood

Some of these authors were familiar to me and will be familiar to lots of people but others are newer or from a different place or parts of the universe I have yet to visit. Thank you so much to the people who replied to my tweet.

 

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