women in literature

I was twelve or thirteen when I first started reading and writing fan fiction, and I can’t see myself stopping any time soon. Fan fiction is not only creative, I haven’t simply been a part of great communities, but there are some really interesting dynamics going on with feminist refiguring of literary icons.

I love Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing so much. Who better with whom to finish our trip into feminist science fiction? And how to pick just a few of her works to write about…?!

Octavia E. Butler is most likely the best writer I’ve ever encountered. That’s certainly true technically: she’s flawless. I mean that there is literally not a thing I would change in her writing, and that is absolutely unique. But it’s her incisive, loving explorations of a broken world that will blow your mind wide open.

I hate to do this, but I’m going to kill a lot of the wonder of James Tiptree, Jr. right from the start.

In the late '60s and early '70s, there emerged a man of mystery on the US feminist science fiction scene. He was painfully modest, staggeringly talented, and reclusive indeed.

Because I'm a slightly perverse creature, I'm going to start this series about feminist literary icons with a one you've probably never heard of. Written by a man. Featuring a woman who dies of longing when her dreamed-of lover doesn't materialize.

All the poets Iran is famous for – Khayyam, Hafez, Rumi – lived hundreds of years ago... and were dudes. But modernist poetry in Iran is alive and well, and its most important female poet, Forough Farrokhzad, is a contemporary Iranian iconoclast on par with former prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Although lack of adequate translations made her little known outside of Iran, Farrokhzad became famous for her work in her home country before her untimely death in 1967.