Including Bill "Smokey" Robinson among "folk-song writers" is a bit of a stretch. I absolutely love and admire Smokey and his work, but his (private) knowledge of folksongs does not turn his compositions into "folk music" under any plausible definition.

Of course, for many of us, any song written by a known contemporary artist is, ispo facto, not a "folk song." But most of us should be able to agree that some songwriters alive today have enough folk-music background for their work to be categorized as "folk," or at least, "folk-like."

One contemporary American writer who was once deeply involved in the folk idiom, and who deserves mention as a unique songwriting talent, is Lucinda Williams. She's not especially prolific, and is such an insane perfectionist that her album releases are few and far between, but whenever she does manage to put something out, there are plenty of articles praising her as the greatest of them all. Maybe, maybe not, but certainly as worthy of a mention here as anyone else listed so far.