In 2022, the world will be a different place than it is today. The rising young writers of today will have set their mark on the literary landscape, and their work will inform the way we see ourselves as a culture. Here are some of my favourite picks for authors who will have influenced our world in 2022:

Stephanie Meyer

Stephanie Meyer is the author of the Twilight series, which has sold over 100 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages. Her books have become a worldwide phenomenon, with films based on them grossing more than $3 billion at the box office globally. In addition to her best-selling novels, Meyer has written The Host and The Chemist, both bestsellers in their own right; she wrote The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella, and so much more.

J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling is, of course, best known for writing the Harry Potter series. Rowling has won several awards for her work, including a National Book Award, a BAFTA Children’s Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award. She was also named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2007 and 2016 respectively; she was ranked number 14 on Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2012; she received an OBE for services to children’s literature in 2008; and she won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2020).

James Patterson

James Patterson is a bestselling author, but he’s also the author of many books. That’s right: James Patterson has written more than sixty novels, each one a standalone story with its own characters and intricate plot. He’s also the author of several series that follow the same characters over multiple stories. These include his wildly popular Alex Cross Mysteries, Maximum Ride Adventures and Middle School Novels (which includes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid spinoff).

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is the author of the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), which was published to critical acclaim and included in several “best of” lists for 2014. Her other works include Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2016), and Difficult Women: A Memoir (2017). Gay’s work focuses on the intersection of race, gender, class, sexuality, mental illness and physical disability; she has written about a wide range of topics including colorism among black women in the United States as well as racism within feminism. Some critics have argued that her perspective is too limited to be representative of women in general, though others have praised it as an honest account by someone who grew up with marginalisation issues but also struggled internally with self-acceptance.