author

Author is a title conferred, late or soon, upon an individual whose writings have circulated to such an extent that the culture concedes and confers upon it a reputation, and while many have achieved this status in greater or lesser degree, the title itself is an acknowledgement of status and ‘authority’. But whereas an ‘author’ appears only at the moment of cultural recognition, a ‘writer’ is simply one who writes and is born at the moment of his or her act of writing, not through the conferring of the status of social recognition. An author is a social construct; a writer is one who performs a human process.

(Bryant 2002, 11)

Contributed by Wout. View changelog.