Julie Powell - I wouldn’t call her a visionary, but I liked her work quite a bit. It was clear in her second book that she was a very troubled person, and it is a real shame she died so young.

Ditto Elizabeth Wurtzel, who - in my opinion - was a huge talent.

I read a lot of memoirs, though, and people very rarely write happy ones. One of my favourites is Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg - if I do everything her mother didn’t (and vice versa) I know I will be a good mother.

I feel this way whenever I read something by Cormac McCarthy. His words are so beautiful, and the worlds he creates are so ugly…

Elfquest is a series of graphic novels, a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons.

My older brother was reading them, so I started them as well, and they really changed by worldview for the better. The artwork is really, really beautiful, and the idea of a group of elves who commune with wolves to survive in an alien environment is such a cool idea. The books made me feel transported to another, wilder place.

There are no villains in these books, at least not in the standard sense. Some characters do horrible things, but because they are flawed, misunderstood, traumatised or misguided. The humans who torture and kill elves have their reasons. The trolls, who enslave rock-shaper elves, have their reasons. Some elves want to subjugate their own kind and annihilate elves with ‘mixed blood’, and even they have their reasons. Understanding that made me better understand the world I live in. and made me more empathetic.

If anyone wants to read these books, the creators have put most of the series online for free.