For 2013, Time Magazine deemed only two writers influential enough to crack their list of the 100 Most Influential People on the planet. The two that cracked it? George Saunders and 2013's It-Writer-Of-The-Year Hilary Mantel.
This year's It-Writers, John Green and Donna Tartt, predictably made 2014's list, but Time's editors were apparently on a literary bender, because they included three--THREE! 3! three!--additional writers. Is writing making a comeback with regard to influence on the world?
Not quite. It's usually the writer's other activities that makes them noteworthy.
The three writers in addition to Green and Tartt:
Arundhati Roy
Best known for winning the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 1998 for her debut novel The God of Small Things, she rarely writes fiction any longer.
Most of her output for the past decade involves political activism covering a wide swath of issues, and that's why Time found her noteworthy.
Barbara Brown Taylor
The writer or editor of thirteen books, Taylor is a renowned Episcopalian priest, professor, and theologian.
Yeah, it wasn't her writing that won Time over.
Binyavanga Wainaina
Best known as a memoirist, Wainaina won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002 for his work Discovering Home.
Wainaina is of note for Time not because of his skill with turning a phrase though, but because he announced he was gay after a lengthy list of anti-gay legislation swept across Africa in 2014.
All are worthy reasons of being selected as one of the world's most influential people, all noteworthy, all reasonable and dignified and wonderful.
But for literary merit alone?
No.
So two writers for their writing it is.
Maybe some day.
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