Best Women Writers

Why is it that men, and not women, have always had power, wealth, and fame? Woolf, a major modernist writer and critic, takes us on an erudite yet conversational--and completely entertaining--walk around the history of women in writing, smoothly comparing the architecture of sentences by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen , all the while lampooning the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day.

Aristocratic, 80-year-old Iris Temple has a fondness for exotic meats and her poison-pen Book of Secrets keeps her family and all of Savannah’s elites in line. Shortly after Iris dies, compromising tidbits from the Book of Secrets are mysteriously published in the newspaper and the quiet lives of the Temple family women explode. When they discover who will inherit the historic family mansion and Iris’s multi-million- dollar estate, the whole boisterous business of secrets forces the women into challenging – and sometimes hilarious – situations as they put the past to rest and forge a brighter future. "Gabriel unfolds her story deftly, with well-paced revelations about the complicated relationships between the mansion's white and black inhabitants...Gabriel also evokes the Spanish moss-covered atmosphere of ghost-filled Savannah, and the Temple mansion in particular, with satisfying spookiness...The author's thoughtfulness about masters and slaves, employers and servants, and family relations also contributes to a satisfyingread. Savannah's atmosphere, culture, and history flavor this engaging tale of intertwined families. ". - Kirkus Reviews. "When some people have far too much time, wealth and power and not enough humanness and courage? "A large cast of colorful characters, including Temple family ghosts, Spanish moss, and an old Savannah mansion . Susan Gabriel is an acclaimed writer who lives in the mountains of North Carolina. It was also selected as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2012.Her latest novel is Temple Secrets (southern humorous fiction), and she is also the author of Grits, Ghosts and Grace: Southern Short Stories , Fearless Writing for Women,Quentin and the Cave Boy, Circle of the Ancestors and Seeking Sara Summers which has garnered international attention since its publication in 2008.

Through poetic portraits, Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan honor the witchy qualities of well-known and obscure authors alike, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many more. Refreshingly global, covering authors across time, ethnicity, class, sensibility, religion, and aesthetic, Literary Witches successfully weaves together the personal, the political, and the heretical. Sometimes quiet and contemplative, other times whimsical and humorous, and always with an undercurrent of frantic, gnashing violence, this book is a dazzling tribute to the women who've conjured our cultural world." Katy Horan's resplendent illustrations pulse with primal magic and are the kindling that set Taisia Kitaiskaia's gripping, exquisitely crafted words ablaze. "Literary Witches pulls together the witchiest women writers (including Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and Flannery O'Connor) in one book with reading recommendations and gorgeous portraits of each. "Kitaiskaia crafts mythological identities for each author in this wonderfully broad collection spanning Emily Dickinson to Octavia Butler to Sappho and Mirabai, each illustrated by Katy Horan and elevating witches from warty Halloween decorations to visionary and inspirational literary icons. She holds an MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Writers and has published poetry in journals such as Crazyhorse , Guernica , Gulf Coast , Pleiades , and The Fairy Tale Review .

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to keep the baby," says Joyce, in a story typical of the birth mothers, mostly white and middle-class, who vent here about being forced to give up their babies for adoption from the 1950s through the early '70s. They recall callous parents obsessed with what their neighbors would say; maternity homes run by unfeeling nuns who sowed the seeds of lifelong guilt and shame; and social workers who treated unwed mothers like incubators for married couples.

She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Adichie, celebrated author of the acclaimed Americanah (Knopf, 2013), offers a more inclusive definition of feminism, one that strives to highlight and embrace a wide range of people and experiences. Her focus on women of color is also an aspect of the movement that hasn't always been given its due, and Adichie works in her own experience and life as a feminist within a more conservative Nigerian culture in an organic and eye-opening way.