OK, I’ve been hammering Australian writers for their blinkered subject matter for a while now.

I make no secret that the biggest influences on my writing are American writers. Some old and some new. I’ve included a few below:

Anything by Lucia Berlin, Ursula K. Le Gunn (espc ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’), Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Yates, Diane Cook and Annie Dillard.

‘The Ram in the Thicket’ Wright Morris

‘Sonny’s Blues’, James Baldwin

‘The Country Husband’, John Cheever (too many to mention)

‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ Joyce Carol Oates

‘St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves’, Karen Russell

‘A New Wave Format,’ Bobbie Ann Mason

‘The Red Neck Way of Knowledge’, Blanche McCary Boyd

‘Greasy Lake’, T.C Boyle

‘The Conductor’, Aleksandar Hemon

‘The Fix,’ Percival Everett

‘The Things They Carried’, Tim O’Brien

‘Gryphon’, Charles Baxter

‘Rock Springs’, Richard Ford

‘People Like That are the Only People Here’, Lorrie Moore

‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’, Raymond Carver

‘Helping’, Robert Stone

‘How to Talk to a Hunter’, Pam Houston

‘Oxygen’, Ron Carlson

‘The Girl on the Plane’, Mary Gaitskill