20-Something Authors

Do you own any book by young authors? Which 20-Something writers do you adore? Are there any up and coming authors we should be aware of?

Well I think jonathan safran foer, zadie smith and arundhati roy were all in their twenties when they published very successful novels.

I read Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House and now I have to go back and read The Icarus Girl.

I recently read A long way gone by Ishmael Beah, and would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in African politics, current events or conflict in the "third world."

(edit: spelling)

Beah is definitely on my TBR list. I didn't realize he was so young, although that makes sense.

It's definitely worth picking up. Beah's attention to detail and the sobriety of his narration (amazing, given the circumstances he describes) make for a very compelling, albeit harrowing, introduction to (and/or primary source on) the civil war in Sierra Leone.

If you like fantasy, (coughs, points at self...)

Really? I might have to check you out one of these days...

And,
as I said in 'Writer-Readers'... I am convinced that everyone on LibraryThing is into reading and writing Fantasy.

Have I been missing out?

White Teeth is a great first novel from Zadie Smith, who was only twenty-five when it was published.

I read that for a World Lit class in college. It was pretty good.

Well, he's not in his twenties anymore, but Alex Garland published The Beach when he was 26, and I haven't gotten tired of it yet after reading it four or five times. I teach it in my contemporary lit. classses, which means I reread it along with them, and they're always amazed at how much better it is than the movie was (if they saw it, years ago). I think his next book (The Tesseract also good) came out while he was still in his twenties too. Beyond those, not sure anything's coming to me right this moment...

Another vote for Zadie Smith. I adore her books! She is however, one of those authors that you either really love or really hate!

According to Wikipedia, Marisha Pessl (author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics) is 30. But according to MySpace, she's 29. In either case, the book was published when she was in her 20s. And it's a great read!

(#8: I'm not into reading fantasy, if that helps. There's at least one other person here.)

Sherman Alexie was only 19 when he wrote Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. It's an amazing book, and he was so close that I consider him an honorary 20-something.

#13- I dig fantasy (certain types), but really detest most science fiction.
#14- I recently read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Alexie and really loved it.

Is there any type of list out there of younger authors?

#15: Funny, I'm just the opposite. I do some certain science fiction, but fantasy makes my eyes glaze over. Where do individual tastes come from??

Tried to find a list via Google, but no luck yet.

It also depends on the work, for me. I've tried some fantasy that I really couldn't stand. Sabriel for example was a book club pick that I could barely start, much less finish. The fantasy I like is young adult literature- things like Harry Potter and New Moon. I also really tend to like dystopias like The Giver.

To be fair, I haven't read much science fiction. A few classic titles like 1984 and Brave New World. I tried to read Hitchhiker's Guide but couldn't do it. The feminist in me just bristles at science fiction. These authors can imagine such vivid worlds so different from ours. Yet, men still run society while women cook and clean. I think they can do better than that.

I consider myself a die-hard feminist, but Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is one of my favorite books. In fact, I've noticed that a LOT of sci-fi, even written by men, depicts societies that are much more egalitarian than real life.

If you want to read some feminist sci-fi, I recommend anything by Octavia E. Butler or Ursula K. LeGuin (touchstone broken).

I just picked up eeee eee eee by 23-year-old poet and novelist Tao Lin and am looking forward to giving it a try. I'm a fan of his poetry collection, You Are a Bit Happier Than I Am.

Maybe its because I read so much nonfiction, but there aren't any young authors i can think of that i like. Though my only encounter as far as I can tell has been Paolini. No offense to anyone that likes him but I came away wondering why/how he got what was basically a mash up fan-fic published. I think he has potential, but he should have kept working and waited til he was older. Actually, just thought of one. Ken Wilber was 23 when he completed his first book the Spectrum of Consciousness, though it wasn't published til he was about 27.

Well, Veronica Roth, the author of Divergent, is 23. And I love that book.