These are the best living authors and novelists currently, according to Rankers and bibliophiles. If you’re looking for a book to read for a rainy day, you can’t go wrong by choosing a novel or short story written by someone on this list. After all, the greatest novelists alive consistently get onto bestseller lists and book club recommendation lists. But amongst all these writers currently alive, who are the best?
If you love reading, then vote for your favorite living authors and novelists below. They hail for a wide range of genres and literary styles, from playwrights to novelists. You’ll find your favorite science fiction writers as well as great dramatic novelists. Everyone on the list and everyone that you vote for must currently be alive. We all know that there are plenty of great writers that have left us, but this list is about the ones we still get to cherish.
Don’t see a great living author listed? Then add him or her so that others may vote and discover some excellent novels. If you’re curious where your favorite novelist currently alive is ranked, use the search box at the top of the list. Otherwise, get your votes on, book worms. Vote for who you think is the best living author (or best living authors) right now!
1
632314Cormac McCarthy
The Road, Blood Meridian2
541345voting closed at #2
Philip Roth - Died May 22, 2018
Portnoy's Complaint, American Pastoral3
175110Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting4
346243Thomas Pynchon
Inherent Vice, Gravity's Rainbow5
640383Stephen King
The Shining, The Stand6
245154Don DeLillo
White Noise, Underworld7
11379voting closed at #7
E. L. Doctorow - Died July 21, 2015
Ragtime, Daniel8
218170John Irving
The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany9
386184Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood10
215158Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day11
11784John le Carré
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold12
261231voting closed at #12
Tom Wolfe - Died May 15, 2018
The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test13
233209Neil Gaiman
American Gods, Coraline14
13183voting closed at #14
Umberto Eco - Died Feb. 19, 2016
Foucault's Pendulum, The Prague Cemetery15
389338J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter series16
7247Michael Connelly
A Darkness More Than Night, The Black Ice17
182131Ian McEwan
Atonement, The Children Act18
283246Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx & Crake19
5937James Lee Burke
Black Cherry Blues, Cimarron Rose20
576518voting closed at #20
Toni Morrison - Died August 5, 2019
Beloved, The Bluest Eye21
155110J. M. Coetzee
Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians22
8460Michel Houellebecq
Platform, Whatever23
8443George R. R. Martin
A Game of Thrones, A Feast for Crows24
176158Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children25
171158Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections, Freedom