(Borrowed from bsky) Five writers who shaped an adult me
Daniel Quinn
Michael Moorcock
Ursula LeGuin
Octavia Butler
Haruki Murakami
Honorable mention goes to Walt Whitman, I was introduced to him by @msbellows .
HP Lovecraft was/is a HUGE influence but didn't define my thinking.
There IS a name which would be at the top of the list. I can't in good conscience name him, because there has to be a line drawn between how much of the artist you can divorce from the art and the evil in the artist. Edgar Allen Poe, not a great dude. HP Lovecraft, not so nice. But the writer to whom I am referring deserves to have their (beautiful, insightful, wise) works disappear and become forgotten.
A mediocre writer might get a shrug of disappointment from me. But the fact that I want to put the most influential person I have never met in the dustbin of history as an enemy of all that is good in humanity has genuinely aged me with grief and terror.
This monster put me on the ledge. Current events pushed me over.