By Marcie McCauley | On February 4, 2026 | Updated February 7, 2026 | Comments (0)
E.L. Konigsburg summed up her stories as being about the “everyday, corn-flakes, worn-out-sneakers way of life” when she won the Newbery Award for her children’s novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in 1968.
This prize-winning novel was a favorite of mine from the first reading—the first sentence, even — because it begins with Claudia’s failure.
She knows she’s never going to be able to run away in “the old-fashioned way”— in the “heat of anger with a knapsack on her back.” She reflects on her situation and makes a plan: she learns to rise to meet challenges in her own way. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On January 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
Founded in 2022, Quite Literally Books is a woman-owned indie publisher with a mission of creating new editions of forgotten or neglected classics by American women authors.
Bremond Berry MacDougall and Lisa Endo Cooper, the two women behind Quite Literally Books, are longtime BFFs who have been bonding over their love of reading since they were twelve.
Learn more about Quite Literally Books on their website and Substack. Read More→
By Juliet Allarton | On October 25, 2025 | Updated October 30, 2025 | Comments (0)
Despite having been written more than 200 years ago (published in 1818, to be exact), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has stood the test of time. There have been around a thousand adaptations of the story to date — with yet another, the 2025 film Frankenstein from Guillermo del Toro the most recent to have joined their ranks.
In her book, with Frankenstein’s creature as her canvas, Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851) formed a distinct picture of society. Our “good” side manifests in the creature’s unexpected intelligence and elegant language, yet the “bad” layers of depression and violence begin to show as the story unfolds. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On September 23, 2025 | Updated September 26, 2025 | Comments (5)
So many books, so little time … especially since so many new and noteworthy books by women are published each year. But let’s not forget those who came before. There are a plethora of 20th-century women novelists whose works deserve to be rediscovered and read; here are a dozen of them.
This list is a small sampling of a treasure trove of women authors who were widely read in their lifetimes, yet have been somewhat forgotten — and shouldn’t be! This selection of 20th-century writers are worthy of rediscovery if you haven’t read them for a while, or to discover for the first time if they’re new to you.
You may also enjoy Bustle’s list of overlooked classic novels by women. Read More→
By Eponynonymous | On September 22, 2025 | Updated June 19, 2026 | Comments (0)
This essay is excerpted from “An Unreasonably Deep Analysis of Goodnight Moon: On Finding (or Creating) Meaning in Dreams” by Eponynonymous.
My daughter used to fight sleep like grim death. Every night as she was dozing off, she would suddenly recoil, bouncing back from that hypnagogic state with flailing arms and banshee screams. It was as if she saw what lay on the other side of sleep and what she saw was death. Oblivion. I don’t think the analogy is too dramatic.
To a baby, bedtime really is a little death. Her sense of self is tenuous, her dreams not so easily distinguished from reality, and her mind freighted with new experiences that some psychologists say have the effect of slowing time. As it was, my daughter came to recognize those grim portents of sleep, and one of them was Goodnight Moon. Read More→
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