George Saunders

I really like lean prose, stuff that just does what it's supposed to and gets out of there.
- George Saunders

He teaches creative writing at Syracuse University, where he gives his students advice like, "Any monkey in a story had better be a dead monkey," and "Aunts and uncles are best construed as heliological small-scale weather systems," and "The number of rooms in a fictional house should be inversely proportional to the years during which the couple living in that house enjoyed true happiness."

He's written several short stories and novellas, and his most recent book, Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (2014), is a collection of essays.

- Writer's Almanac