Announcing a new feature for Entropy called Under the Influence. If you want to contribute, pick a writer who has influenced your writing and write 100 words on that author, mentioning at least one significant, illustrative work. It’s that simple.

To keep this as relevant as possible, I’d ask you NOT to write about contemporaries unless it’s someone of SIGNIFICANT literary accomplishment (Authors like Toni Morrison and Don DeLillo would be great examples of what I mean by accomplishment, though we must all understand that writers from marginalized communities may often have meaningful influences that fall outside what has come to be considered ‘The Literary Canon.’). And please don’t write about anyone you have a personal relationship with.

Examples of writers who have been selected so far by contributors are: Ovid, Kathy Acker, Bruno Schulz, Alan Fante, Dickens, Kafka, Pedro Juan Guttierez, Mary Gaitskill, Michael Moorcock, Amy Hempel, Baudelaire, Herodotus, David Foster Wallace, Anne Frank, and Shakespeare. (Fun, right? I’m psyched to see who else you guys come up with.)

These pieces will be published monthly in groups of six. I will write a brief intro. for each group. I want to include a lot of people in this feature. If I accept your piece I WILL run it at some point. I am committed to presenting a diverse cross-section of authors, as I have with my TNB review column. People of color and LGBTQ people are strongly encouraged to submit.

Please email me (kurtbaumeister@gmail.com) to let me know you want in and who you’re writing about. Once you’re done, please send your piece to me in a Word file along with up to 100 words of biography. I will let you know by email when your piece has been accepted and when it’s going to run. Thank you!