By Nava Atlas | On August 14, 2018 | Updated August 22, 2022 | Comments (0)
Tillie Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007) was an American author of fiction and nonfiction whose body of work was small but influential, drawing upon her personal experiences.
Her writings spoke to the struggles of women and working-class families, placing her in the canon of second-wave feminist literature. While her birth was never recorded officially, it’s been determined she was born in either 1912 or 1913.
Born Tillie Lerner in Omaha, Nebraska, she was the second child of Ida Goldberg and Sam Lerner, Russian-Jewish immigrants. Her father, a laborer, was the Secretary of Nebraska’s Socialist party. Her parents’ socialist views and activism impacted Olsen’s childhood and influenced her later life. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 15, 2018 | Updated January 17, 2026 | Comments (0)
Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American writer known for novels and short stories best described as psychological thrillers. She wove murder, crime, and intrigue through her plots, which were often driven by sociopathic antiheroes.
Born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth Texas, her parents divorced just days before her birth. She acquired the name Highsmith when her mother remarried a few years later.
Recalling her unhappy childhood as “a little hell,” she disliked her mother and stepfather, who argued constantly. Perhaps that figured into her dim view of human nature, as by age eight she was reading studies of mental illness. Finding them fascinating, some of what she learned may have been tucked away for use in her writing. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 14, 2018 | Updated August 19, 2022 | Comments (0)
Fannie Hurst (October 19, 1885 – February 23, 1968) was a prolific American novelist and short-story writer. Though largely forgotten today, her work was hugely popular in her heyday, roughly from the 1920s through the early 1950s.
Her best-known work is the 1933 novel Imitation of Life, which was adapted twice into feature films.
Fannie’s books and short stories featured romantic and sentimental themes, into which were woven social issues that mattered to her. Her writing made her fabulously wealthy and she was acknowledged as one of the highest-paid American writers, male or female.
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By Emma Ward | On July 12, 2018 | Updated June 29, 2024 | Comments (0)
Audre Geraldine Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a self-identified “Black lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” The daughter of West Indian parents, she grew up in New York City.
Her love of writing took root at an early age. Her first poem published in Seventeen magazine while she was in high school.
As society progressed with the anti-war, feminist, and civil rights movements, Audre shifted her writing from themes of love to more political and personal matters. She used her platform as a writer to spread ideas about intersecting oppressions and experiences faced especially by women of color. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On June 15, 2018 | Updated August 24, 2022 | Comments (0)
Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962), was a British poet, novelist, and garden designer. Born at Knole Park, a 365-room ancestral home, her writing career was launched with the publication of Poems of East and West (1917).
She’s known for her private life and as a master gardener perhaps as much as her literature. She was bisexual and concurrent with her happy marriage with Harold Nicolson (also bisexual) had many affairs with women.
It’s widely believed that Vita was the inspiration for the title character of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando. Read More→
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