Top 10 WILFs

Being a writer is soooooooo hard. Everyone is always valuing you for your brains, your passion, your insight about the human condition. No one ever seems to care about what really matters: the way you look. So, to relieve this burden, here are 10 writers that are highly fuckable, and not just for their brains and work. Or, if you’d rather, 10 WILFs.

1. Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision and co-editor and co-founder of n+1. n+1 is cool as shit. And Kunkel manages a rare feat: being both blond and broody.

2. Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You and performer extraordinaire. July is like that girl you worked with at the coffee shop in college: quirky and weird with an “INDIE” brand of cool, and you just know that she’s into some interesting shit in the bedroom. Except unlike that girl from the coffee shop, July has turned pretty much everything she’s touched into some kind of success.

3. Colson Whitehead, author of Sag Harbor and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient. I want Whitehead to take me on a boat on a lake while frogs serenade us, The Little Mermaid style.

4. Diana Spechler, author of Skinny and Who by Fire. There are injustices in this world: some people have good bodies and pretty faces and great hair, and some people are smart and talented writers, and then some people have good bodies and pretty faces and great hair and are smart and talented writers.

5. Joshua Ferris, author of The Unnamed and Then We Came to the End. Isn’t it a tragedy that Ferris is married? Makes me wanna be a homewrecker.

6. Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment and co-editor of The Believer. Julavits taught a workshop at my MFA program last semester. I was glad I didn’t have her as my professor, because her good looks are distracting. Plus she dresses really well.

7. John Wray, author of Lowboy and Canaan’s Tongue. Wray looks like he should be eternally lounging around in the tightest of boxer briefs, not writing a collection of acclaimed novels.

8. Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner for Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri’s stunning good looks have been noted since she first came on the scene over ten years ago, and because of this, I almost left her off this list. But she’s just too goddamn hot.

9. Simon Van Booy, author of Everything Beautiful Began After and Love Begins in Winter. If Van Booy’s Johnny Depp-esque good looks aren’t enough for you, just read his piece for The New York Times’ Modern Love. ::swoon::

10. Zadie Smith, author of On Beauty and The Autograph Man. Smith’s next book is called On Beauty II. It’s a nonfiction collection of essays about what she sees when she looks into the mirror.

— Julia Jackson writes fiction and is a regular contributor to Electric Dish. She has an MFA from Brooklyn College.