Who should you read of British and American contemporary authors?

List over British and American contemporary authors (marked with an asterix * means the authors are considered “easier” reads):

British female authors:

Carol Birch

A.S. Byatt

Marian Keyes *

Doris Lessing

Kate Moss *

Edna O’Brien

Arundhati Roy

Zadie Smith

Muriel Spark

Joanna Trollope

Fay Weldon *

Contemporary British male authors:

Martin Amis

Julian Barnes

Roddy Doyle *

Mark Haddon *

Alan Hollinghurst

Nick Hornby *

Kazuo Ishiguro

Ian McEwan

Salman Rushdie

Irving Welsh *

See: http://www.amazon.com/15-Best-Contemporary-British-Novels/lm/1LY9AH2PBRQLY

Contemporary American female authors:

Tracy Chevalier *

Sandra Cisneros

Joan Didion

Alice Hoffman

Siri Hustvedt

Sue Monk Kidd *

Jhumpa Lahiri

Toni Morrison

Joyce Carol Oates

Alice Sebold

Donna Tartt

Alice Walker

See: http://www.wrl.org/books-and-reading/adults/100-contemporary-american-women-fiction-writers

Contemporary American male authors:

Paul Auster

Don DeLillo

Junot Diaz

Dave Eggers *

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Franzen

John Irving *

Cormack McCarthy

Chuck Palahniuk

Phillip Roth

David Foster Wallace