Why ?
Newpaper columnists excluded from definition of author .
Both Fiction/non-fiction writers and dead authors included .
The ever reclusive Bill Watterson.
Or, if he doesn’t count under your definition of author, Terry Pratchett.
David Sedaris, Sylvia Plath, Mark Twain, Richard Brautigan and Dorothy Parker.
Neil Gaiman - not only a great author, but a really nice guy.
Bonus if his kids are at the dinner too. (Maddy at the very least…girl’s a laugh.)
Cormac McCarthy, likely.
Ray Bradbury
Walker Percy
Mary Shelley
Ernest Hemingway
Dorothy Parker
Ernest Gann
C.S.Lewis
Keith Miller (wrote “The Book of Flying”)
George R. R. Martin. First because his descriptions of food are just awesome, and second because I can punch him in the effing face and tell him to get his head out of his ass and finish writing.
Jane Austen
Edgar Allen Poe
Shakespeare
Rosie M. Banks.
Robert Heinlein
Tennessee Williams
Lewis Grizzard, a Great American. (Cheerfully ignoring the prohibition on columnists)
Stephen King, 'cuz he seems like he might be a genuinely cool kind of guy to hang with.
Dave Barry, though I don’t know how much eating I’d get done, as compared to just snorting lunch ingredients out my nose.
Harlan Ellison, because he seems wicked clever, and I want to see if he’s as big a douche as everyone says he is.
Which one’s the most likely to pick up the check?
Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens might be fun, if I could manage to catch him in a good mood.
Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain
Dick Francis
Robert Parker
Agatha Christie
I want to find out the secret of writing a successful mystery novel. 