Diana Nakeeb

Different authors have been my favorites at different times of my life. Growing up, I was in awe of the major American poets, particularly: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Emily Dickinson, and of course, everybody's favorite, Edgar Allen Poe. As a teen, my attention was divided between Sci-Fi (Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, and the whole marvelous moosh of pop culture, from comics to films: I never met a superhero/heroine that I didn't like), and -- in American literature, Henry James. How's that for a schizophrenic background? As an adult, I learned to sample translations from every country and culture. I have yet to find a country that has not contributed something priceless, to the world, through its literature. As a college student, perhaps I had a particular taste for French, Russian, and German authors, enough to give me the strength to persist until I could read them in the original texts. And at the moment? There's so much competition among contemporary authors, from Annie Proulx (Brokeback Mountain, The Shipping News) to Khaled Hosseini (The Kite-Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns) and Hector Tobar (The Barbarian Nurseries) -- it would take all day to name just the totally outstanding. It always amuses me when scientists reveal that they are jealous of "Nobel Prize Winners," whom they can count (somewhat grumpily) on their fingers. In literature, there is such an abundance of good writers, from whom I have received so much enjoyment and education, it's too exhausting even to think about, let alone envy.

Got to feed the birds and the cats, both captive and wild.