As the Book Review Editor at the News & Observer of Raleigh, I had the great good fortune to work with Fred Chappell and Robert Morgan after they had already established themselves as leading Appalachian writers who were masters of almost every literary form, including short stories, poetry and the novel.

Many people assume that everyone in publishing dreams of being a writer, that they’d all rather be hacks than flacks.

I’ve never worked in the biz so I don’t know if that’s true (though I can report that EVERY book critic dreams of being a REAL WRITER). However, during my years as a reviewer I did witness a small number of publicists leap across the divide, including the essayist Sloane Crosley and our newest member of Top Ten Land, Jennifer Gilmore.

It’s the kind of New York Times headline that would drive most every self-respecting author into a fit of uncontrollable rage: George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year.

For most writers, 25 short story collections would be three careers. For Joyce Carol Oates it’s just a notch on her heavyweight title belt as the World’s Most Prolific Literary Artist.

We are honored to welcome the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan to Top Ten Land.

D.T. Max is receiving warm reviews for his biography of Top Ten contributor David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story.

As the Book Review Editor at the News & Observer of Raleigh, I had the great good fortune to work with Fred Chappell and Robert Morgan after they had already established themselves as leading Appalachian writers who were masters of almost every literary form, including short stories, poetry and the novel.

So it was with special pleasure that I witnessed one of their worthy successors emerge in 1994 when Ron Rash debuted with The Night The New Jesus Fell to Earth and Other Stories from Cliffside, North Carolina.

In 1982 Paul Auster published debuted with a classic memoir about life, death and the writing life, The Invention of Solitude. Now 65 and one of America’s most accomplished writers, he has delivered a second direct reflection on his life, Winter Journal.

“A collection of fragmentary reminiscences held together by serious authorial charm,” says Ed Wright in The Australian, “[it] comes across as a man living comfortably with a destiny and posterity largely achieved. … full of the grace, charm, playfulness and intellectual curiosity that makes Auster such pleasurable and worthwhile company.”

Our newest list comes from Lev Grossman, who has pulled off the magical feat of creating literary works with bestseller appeal. Lev’s work is informed by the fantastic.

Warp (1997) centers on a verbally clever Star Trek fan on the cusp (we hope) of adulthood, who imagines himself in various episodes of the show and as a knight-errant saving damsel’s in distress.

Codex (2004) is a cerebral thriller about an investment banker whose discovers a rare medieval codex that is eerily similar to the computer game that obsesses him.