What writers have most inspired you?

What writers have most inspired you?

Russell Celyn Jones (Published writer. Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MA Programme at Birkbeck College (University of London).) gives expert video advice on: What drives you to write?; When did you first know you were a writer?; What do you love most about writing? and more...

Well, the writers who have inspired me are North American twentieth-century authors, with the exception of Herman Melville, who was nineteenth century. I found, as a Welsh writer, a greater source of inspiration in American authors who were not hampered by issues of social class, in the same way that nineteenth century English writers were. They were more concerned with creating myths and of carving a nation out of their prose. They were very interested in landscape, as I am, and characters who are challenged by the landscape, rather than by climbing up the social scale.