By Nava Atlas | On March 20, 2019 | Updated March 5, 2026 | Comments (0)
Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27, 1759 – September 10, 1797) was a British author of fiction and nonfiction, philosopher, and women’s rights advocate.
Though her body of work was fairly substantial, including many essays, a history of the French Revolution, and some fiction, she’s now primarily known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
She was the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later known as Mary Shelley), the author of Frankenstein; tragically, she died a few days after giving birth to her namesake. Read More→
By Larrisa Pope | On February 15, 2019 | Updated March 23, 2026 | Comments (0)
Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813 – March 7, 1897) chronicled her life under enslavement in North Carolina and the constant sexual harassment by a prominent doctor.
She is alternately referred to as Harriet A. Jacobs (or simply Harriet Jacobs) and is today best known as the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, an autobiographical narrative published privately in 1861. Read More→
By Skyler Gomez | On February 11, 2019 | Updated August 29, 2023 | Comments (3)
Gabriela Mistral, born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (April 7, 1889 – January 10, 1957), was a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist best known for being the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
She was awarded the prize “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.”
In the Introduction to A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral (2002), Licia Fiol-Matta encapsulates the writer’s unique persona: Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 6, 2019 | Updated June 12, 2023 | Comments (0)
Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American author of fiction and nonfiction whose works influenced a generation of genre writers who came after her.
She was recognized for wryly humorous accounts of family life, and more significantly, sharply told stories and novels of psychological terror.
While Jackson remains best known for “The Lottery,” her widely anthologized 1948 short story, it would be a disservice to boil her career down to this controversial work that put her on the literary map. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On January 22, 2019 | Updated February 21, 2026 | Comments (2)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911), also known as Frances Watkins Harper and Frances E.W. Harper, combined her talents as a writer, poet, and public speaker with a deep commitment to abolition and social reform.
She sustained a long and prolific publishing career at a time when it was rare for women, particularly women of color, to have a voice. She used that voice in powerful ways, and as a result, she has been referred to as “the mother of African American journalism.”
Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), her first collection, was possibly her most successful, having gone through many editions. “The Two Offers” was the first published short story by a BlackAmerican woman. And Iola Leroy (1892) was one of the first novels by a Black woman to be published in the U.S.
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