The 2011 TIME 100 Poll

Cast your votes for the leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes that you think are the most influential people in the world. Though official voting for inclusion on the TIME 100 list has now closed (with Rain as the 2011 readers' choice), users can continue to vote for their favorites until the final list, selected by our editors, is revealed on Thursday, April 21st

TIME 100 Candidates

Jennifer Egan

By TIME StaffMonday, Apr. 04, 2011
dek
Pieter M. van Hattem

Age: 48
Occupation: Author
Previous TIME 100 appearances: 0

Jennifer Egan is the type of genre-defying writer that comes around once every — what, decade? Generation? We're not even sure. Egan works in fractured styles, hidden narrators and even one PowerPoint presentation. Her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award. Never has a book deftly covered the role that popular music and technology play in our lives — from the 1970s punk movement to a teenage boy obsessed with the pauses in between rock songs — and the way our language is transformed by the gadgets we invent and then overuse.

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