Living With Pop Culture

So I've started school again, and have been massively busy with classes and school, but had an intersting thought and an interesting assignment to share.
The interesting thought was that it is fun to be an english major in classes where the majority of students are anything but english majors. My responses are so completely different from other students, and from society in general, that I seem to be a bit of an outcast.
Anyway, the assignment was cool, so I'll pass it on. The first part was to name five living entertainers (mine were 1. David Letterman 2. Oprah 3. Dane Cook 4. Jessica Simpson 5. Ellen DeGeneres) and then five living authors ( 1. Audrey Niffenegger 2. J.K Rowling 3. Maeve Binchy 4. Ethan Canin 5. Salman Rushdie) and then write about why we (meaning society) value the first five more than the last five. I had some difficulty at first, because as much as I love Ellen, I love writers even more.
The next part of the assignment was: If you had 30 minutes to talk to anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? Why? What would you talk about?

My response:
If I could get a hold of her for 30 minutes, I would talk to J.K. Rowling. I would talk to her because she has managed to succeed in one of the most difficult professions to succeed in, and I would love to someday come anywhere close to being as respected and loved an author as she is. I would talk about her conception of the idea of everything about Harry Potter, how hard it was to write the actual books (i.e. how did she actually manage to sit down and write a book, and then six more?), what it is like to see your work become internationally loved, what it is like to see your fictional characters come to life in movies, what it’s like to have started a global phenomenon, and what its like to be one of the most banned books in the history of the world. In short, we would discuss what it means to be a famous author.


What would you come up with if you were given this assignment?