Another great introductory essay, Foucault's "What Is an Author?" won't just tell you what Foucault thinks authors' names are good for; it'll also give you a good sense of how he thinks discourse works. And since this essay is a direct response to Barthes's "The Death of the Author" (1968), you'll be getting a peek at the inner workings of poststructuralist cross-pollination.
Some questions to keep in mind: how are the names of "authors" different from the names of "ordinary" people? Where are the limits of texts? And how is Foucault's idea not only of the author, but the reader, too, different from the ideas of Barthes?