except for Alice Munro (the greatest North American woman writer of our time) and Leonard Cohen (who has made a hybrid art of poetry and song).
In the States, the last great writers to recently pass were Arthur Miller, Ray Bradbury, and Allen Ginsberg. No one who has followed or will follow will have the same high-level output and broadly-aesthetic critical vetting except for perhaps Lawrence Ferlinghetti (now in his 90s bridging 7 decades). *And no one has ever matched or will ever match Shakespeare’s output, achievement, influence, and greatness.
ps/(Of Harper Lee–she wrote a great book, but was not in the same league as those continuously working writers who built a significant canon of work.)