Celebrating Female Authors – Best Female Authors
It was hard for me to pick a short list of best female authors. As with any group of authors there are so many standouts. I selected those with award winning books but have added some of my favorites and notable others at the end.
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
Considered the pioneer in stream of consciousness as a narrative device (which I love BTW). An extended essay which uses a fictional character to deliver a manuscript that was a series of lectures Virginia Woolf delivered at Cambridge University in 1928, the essay is a feminist text on women writers in a profession dominated by men.
Louisa May Allcott – Little Women
Before publishing Little Women in 1868, Louisa may Allcott wrote under the pen name A. M. Barnard. Based on her early life, Little Women follows four sisters in their quest to find their place and happiness in male centered society.
Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, Lee’s story of a childhood spent in a small Southern town and a crisis that shook it to its core. To Kill a Mockingbird explores the roots of human behavior, innocence, experience, kindness, cruelty, love, hatred, humor, and insanity. Regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
March, the story of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Geraldine March’s book won a Pulitzer Prize for this love story set on the front lines of the American Civil War. Injured in battle, March returns home to a loving wife and family who have no idea the atrocities he has endured.
Donna Tartt received a Pulitzer Prize for this novel that follows the life of Theo Decker, a boy who survives an accident that forever changes the path of his life. A haunting odyssey through contemporary America and a drama with unforgettable characters, suspense, and is both beautiful, addictive, and in my opinion horrific, at the same time.
A 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning novel and top ten novel of 2004, Gilead tells a tale of three generations from the Civil War to twentieth century. A story of fathers and sons, spiritual battles that rage in America, in a tale that will “break your heart”.
Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Doris Lessing’s fictional character Anna is a writer who keeps four journals. One where she explores the African experience, one her disillusionment with communism, another about a heroine reliving her experience, and last a personal journal. At last Anna tries to weave them together in one golden notebook.
Hilary Mantle – Bring Up the Bodies
Winner of the 2021 Man Booker Prize, Bring Up the Bodies is a sequel to Man Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall about the fall of Anne Boleyn. Thomas Cromwell stands ready to bring down her reign but Anne and her family will not go down without a fight.
Louise Erdrich – The Round House
National Book Award Winner, The Round House, is a novel I read a couple of years ago. Although a hard subject, it is a powerful coming of age novel about a Native American boy who witnesses a murder on his reservation.
Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries
Man Booker Prize Winner The Luminaries was published in 2013. “Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner.” I added this one to my TBR list.
Jennifer Egan – A Visit from the Goon Squad
Pulitzer Prize Winner, “A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.”
National Book Award Winner, “A luminous first novel, set in Greece, Scotland, Greenwich Village, and Long Island, that traces the members of a Scottish family as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises. In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.”
I chose to highlight those authors who won award to keep this list manageable, but would like to showcase a few of my favorites and outstanding female authors including Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; J. K. Rowling, The Harry Potter Series; Judy Blume, Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Diana Gabaldon, Outlander; Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club; and Lisa See, Snowflower and the Secret Fan.
Want to see more amazing female authors? Head to Abe Books.com Best Female Authors list.
I would love to know who your favorite female authors are. List them in the comments!
Happy reading! Tricia