Elizabeth Berg

If any author can be said to capture the way women think, it is Elizabeth Berg, author of the best-selling Talk Before Sleep. Her insights into the human condition have led to six intensely moving novels exploring friendship, marriage, mortality, and love in its many varieties. Her most recent book, What We Keep, explores the confused, conflicted landscape of a mother-daughter relationship.

Gretel Ehrlich

Born in California and educated at Bennington College and UCLA, Gretel Ehrlich is a much honored author of essays, memoir, fiction and poetry. Writing with grace and awe, she embraces such varied subjects as her love for animals, nature, and the American Mountain West, the clash and the fusion of diverse cultures, and the path of her own spiritual journey.

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Cristina Garcia

Cristina Garcia lends her rich voice to the chorus of Latina writers whose work brings vitality to modern literature. Critical acclaim accompanied publication of both her novels, Nation Book Award nominee Dreaming in Cuban and her more recent work The Aguero Sisters. Garcia weaves mesmerizing stories of individuals under the powerful influence of Cuban American family life.

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Pam Houston

Pam Houston, in her newest book Waltzing the Cat, explores the life of Lucy, an award-winning landscape photographer. Author of the widely acclaimed short story collection, Cowboys Are My Weakness, Houston once again inspires and challenges her readers with an engaging, unconventional heroine, who takes physical and emotional risks.

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Nora Okja Keller

In her exceptional first novel, Comfort Women, Nora Okja Keller fashions exquisite images to reveal the youthful Beccah’s painful need for a normal home life amidst the tormenting memories of her Korean mother Akiko. Sold at age twelve to service soldiers from the occupying army, Akiko hides her past from the daughter she fiercely loves, retreating into a recurring psychosis and the world of spirits.

Laurie R. King

With Laurie R. King, readers get not one ingenious, articulate woman sleuth, but two: Oxford student Mary Russell, who finds herself leagued with a mostly retired Sherlock Holmes, and police detective Kate Martinelli, who solves homicides in present-day San Francisco. Winner of the Edgar, The Nero Wolfe, and Britain’s John Creasey Dagger awards, King challenges and delights in these two intricate, well crafted series.

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Lisa See

Lisa See’s first book, On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family, traces the journey of See’s great-grandfather, Fong See, who became the godfather of Los Angeles’s China Town and patriarch of a sprawling family. It was a New York Times Notable Book for 1995. Flower Net, See’s riveting story of a murder investigation in today’s China, was nominated for an Edgar award for the best first novel.

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