[filiwickers]

Identity of the author matters because a writer's work is informed by their experience in the world. As a white male, I will view & experience the world differently from Jane Jacobs. Even in a book about facts, a person's relation to those facts reflects their lived experience.

This is especially important in fiction books where you are immersed in the experience of main characters. If the authors identity mirrors yours, then the experience of the main character will not build my understanding of how other people live. At this point, you are reading only for entertainment (which is fine, but you must acknowledge and accept that).

Books, whether fiction or nonfiction, are stories. They present information in a narrative. That narrative will be determined by who writes it and how they've lived their life.

[malandrew]

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but it's like you didn't even bother to read and parse what I wrote before you responded:

> Unless the topic is related to the author's identity (i.e. it's about gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, etc.), I don't see why someone should care about the identity of an author.

There are hundreds of thousands of non-fiction topics where the identity of the author is irrelevant (or at least one of the least relevant factors impacting the authors work). Why should I care in those cases?

[pjmorris]

> Why should I care in those cases?

I thought the GP answered your question succinctly as follows:

>> Even in a book about facts, a person's relation to those facts reflects their lived experience.

[malandrew]

Why should I elevate one of their lived experiences (their gender in this case) over all of their other lived experiences? For many topics, experiences attributable to one's gender is all but irrelevant relative to experiences not attributable to gender.

Why not their age? nationality? place of birth? race? sexual orientation? height? native language? myers-briggs personality type? etc., etc.,

[pjmorris]

I didn't single out gender. All of those other factors are attributes of lived experience. However, restricting yourself to a confined set of those accumulated attributes is likely to yield a restricted view of the world.

[filiwickers]

Yes, good point! Those are all important as well. I did not intend in my comment to emphasize a binary identity for authors. Seek out books by authors from any lived experience dissimilar from yours to maximize your grasp of our world.