Recently some Facebook friends asked me to list fifteen authors who had influenced me. I had only 15 minutes to compile my list. Here's what I wrote:

C. S. Lewis
J. R. R. Tolkein
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dante
Lady Julian of Norwich
T. S. Eliot (I apparently like writers who use their initials)
Jane Austen
Madeleine L’Engle
William Shakespeare
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Charles Dickens
George MacDonald
Lauren Winner
George Herbert

Once I had more time to think about it, I traded Lauren Winner for Carolyn Custis James. Philip Yancey probably should probably appear here somewhere too. How would you answer this question?