About Us

Literary Ladies Guide was started in 2012 as an outgrowth of Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life, a book by Nava Atlas, writer, visual artist, designer — and major book nerd.

Our goal: To be the web’s most comprehensive resource on classic women’s literature, focusing mainly on women who wrote in the English language, as well as global authors who were translated extensively.

Our mission: To elevate the voices of women writers  and to be inspired by those who came before us. Literary Ladies Guide honors the contributions of women to literature, literary history, and journalism.

Our hope: To inspire readers and writers from all walks of life through the lives and words of the women authors of the past, and to help readers discover or rediscover those who have been forgotten or under-appreciated.

And for fun and education: We also present articles on literary travels, the bookish life, and advice for writers, mainly from the classic women authors represented on the site.

The women authors featured on this site have already passed on. Fortunately, there are many more women writing today, so we want to focus on the achievements of classic authors who paved the way for today’s writing women.

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The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life

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Some of our most popular features:

• Writing tips from classic authors: Advice that’s timeless!
• Dear Literary Ladies: Similarly, a classic author “answers” questions and dilemmas about the writing life.
• The Literary Ladies Almanac: Birthdates and other literary anniversaries featuring the authors on this site.
• Film and stage adaptations of classic novels: Sometimes the movies and plays are well known, but not the authors behind them.
• Literary Musings: Wide-ranging topics about literature as it pertains to our classic authors, their lives and work. Book round-ups, literary friendships, fascinating facts, and lots more.
• The Bookish Life: The many pleasures of being a book nerd.

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Submit

Our Wish List: We need contributions of content! A large part of the Wish List is comprised of the authors who need main pages on the site, plus a slew of other topics for those who’d like to contribute and need prompts. Full instructions on how to create these main pages are at the top of this aforementioned list. 

We’d also love to expand our offerings on book-adjacent topics including literary travel, pioneering women journalists, special libraries and bookstores, and more. If you have ideas of your own, or older articles or essays you’d like to repurpose, pitch me via the content form.

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Other ways to get involved

• Share our articles and graphics on your social media pages
• Join our Facebook page and share our Pinterest content

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More about Nava Atlas …

Nava produces visual books on women’s issues, including The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life (2011). She’s also known as the author of many books on vegan (and earlier, vegetarian) cooking. Visit her other life at The Vegan Atlas.

Nava Atlas is an active fine artist whose work is shown and collected by museums and universities across the U.S. See her work at navaatlasart.com. 

Learn more in her permanent archive of papers at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library. Her home is in the Hudson Valley region of New York State.