International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate the triumphs, skills, and courage of women across the world. As we look through the window of hindsight at history, we observe the terrific feats of women, their struggles, fortitude, intelligence, and sacrifices in the evolving progress of equality. In the world we live in today, International Women’s Day celebrates every aspect of what it means to be a woman, honoring the determination, innovation, strength, creativity, joy, and tragedies woven through women’s stories.
Most of us have heard of famous female authors like Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, and Mary Shelley. There are many writers whose voices have lifted and moved readers, and their work deserves to continue to be heard as time moves on. Let’s look back and review or learn something new from a few of the women who have had a profound impact on literature.
Audre Lorde
The inspiring Audre Lorde was a multitalented writer, professor, and lifelong social activist, devoting her life to illuminating and confronting issues in civil rights, feminism, gay rights, classism, and disability. As a black, queer woman in the middle of twentieth century New York City, she supported the creation of a black studies department within the male-dominated universities where she worked as a professor. She assisted in founding the first publishing press for women of color in the US, and in the formation of an organizations to assist women throughout the world, including victims of sexual assault in St. Croix, and women impacted by the apartheid in South Africa. Audre was fierce in her writing. In her poetry, she made calls for social justice and explored the dueling expectations and roles within the female identity, positing that the differences between genders, classes, and races should be explored and celebrated. Her subsequent poems inspected themes like the intersectionality of women’s lives, the celebration black identity, and rage at social injustice. Her prose was consistent with these themes, including one of her prominent works, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. In her later years, she wrote about motherhood and her battle with cancer, which was portrayed in her books The Cancer Journals and A Burst of Light, both collections of essays expressing her struggle with illness that would ultimately take her life. Audre is regarded for her narrative bravery, persistence in advocating for equality, and the authenticity with which she conveyed her experiences as a black woman, lesbian, and mother.
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor (not referring to the actress, who with a stroke of bad luck, rose to fame at a similar time as the author) was a British writer who focused her work on the nature of everyday life. Born in 1912, she grew up in England, working as a governess and librarian until she married in 1936. Her first book was titled, At Mrs. Lippincote’s, a humorous autobiographical tale, and was received with positive reviews and commercial success. Her publications included eleven more novels and a children’s book, along with short stories. Inspired by relationships and events in her own life, one of her short stories portrayed her correspondence with fellow writer and friend Robert Liddel, and another illustrated her disdain of living in the public eye. She was admired by her peers and the masses as an extraordinary writer for her portrayal of natural behavior with precise language through a sometimes plotless, natural setting. She passed away in 1975, and several of her novels, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and Angel, have since been interpreted into film.
Grace Paley
Born in the early 1920s, Grace Paley was a American poetry and shorty story writer, as well as political activist and teacher. A child of Jewish Russian immigrants, she grew up in the Bronx, and her work was heavily influenced by the city. She was inclined to write what was familiar to her, so her stories centered on portraying the authentic lives of New York women like herself in a style that was grounded and true to life. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled, The Little Disturbances of Man, gained her a following. Her stories included recurring characters as she progressively analyzed issues of civil rights, class, and feminism through her stories. Paley was an avid political activist concerning civil rights, feminism, and pacifism throughout her entire life. Notably, she contributed to the founding of the Greenwich Village Peace Center in the early 1960s, and years later traveled to Hanoi as part of a peace mission group to arrange the release of prisoners during the Vietnam War. She continued to speak publicly into the later stages of her life, maintaining her passion to create a better world for her grandchildren. Paley’s most famous work was The Collected Stories, an assembly of three books of her own short stories that became finalists for both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.
Female writers continue to shape layers of the social, societal, and cultural story of womanhood as the future of gender equality unfolds before us. The work of current female authors contributes to the collective of determined, ambitious, deeply feeling, and observant women who exhibit the inspiring perseverance it takes to write and keep writing. Richter publishing is proud to assist our extraordinary female authors in sharing their books with the world. A list of books written by our female authors can be found here.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Richter Publishing 