LITERARY WOMEN
Celebrating Women Authors Since 1982
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Roberta Smoodin
Meditations on the Meaning of Magic
Roberta Smoodin, author of Presto!
Roberta Smoodin
Go Anywhere, Do Anything, Be Anyone - The Magic of Writing
Roberta Smoodin, author of Presto and Ursus Major, talks about the liberation inherent in the act of writing. Ms. Smoodin is currently working on a novel concerned with the problems of biography and love triangle; and illusion and reality.
Tatjana Soli
A finalist for the 2010 Bellwether Prize, TATJANA SOLI’s debut novel, The Lotus Eaters, provides a unique and multilayered perspective of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a woman among men, a female photojournalist. A graduate of Stanford University and the Warren Wilson College, Ms. Soli lives in Orange County.
Visit Tatjana Soli’s website › From 2011 Festival ›
Dana Spiotta
Dana Spiotta is the author of Stone Arabia, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her previous novels are Eat the Document, which was a National Book Award Finalist, and Lightning Field, which was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West. Spiotta has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.
Visit Dana Spiotta’s website › From 2013 Festival ›
Ann Stanford
Trampling Out The Vintage
Robin Johnson PhD., poet-in-residence at Pepperdine. Ann Stanford, PhD., poet, and editor of The Women Poets in English.
Lynn Stegner
LYNN STEGNER’s most recent novel, Because a Fire Was in My Head, was the recipient of the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for Best Novel of 2005. Her soul-felt portrait of a lost woman is “authentically compassionate as it is unsparing, a rare feat in fiction and in life.” Ms. Stegner has written three other award-winning novels and is currently at work on a collection of short stories.
Visit Lynn Stegner’s website › From 2009 Festival ›
Janet Sternburg
What makes women write? In The Writer on Her Work, Volumes I & II, Janet Sternburg has gathered answers from more than three dozen major American women writers. Authors as diverse as Alice Walker, Joan Didion and Jan Morris talk about what it means to be a woman and a writer. Sternburg’s work provides an excellent guide to some of the most important and interesting women writing today.
Visit Janet Sternburg’s website › From 1992 Festival ›
Ruth Stone
Ruth Stone is a eminent poet, mentioned for the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote In An Iridescent Time, Topography and Other Poems, Unknown Messages and Cheap. The reader in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women will see her own sisters and mother, friends, and perhaps herself. Rarely stuffy, her poems seem to say life is good no matter how hard. Stone has worked as a poet-in-residence and teacher, raised three children, and involved herself with drum music, bus travel and the women’s liberation movement. Her newest collection of poems is Second Hand Coat.
Visit Ruth Stone’s website › From 1988 Festival ›
Susan Straight
Susan Straight writes from the unique perspective of a white woman immersed in the black community in which she lives. Her gifts are acute perception and a breathtaking ability to express what her heart discovers. The epiphanies of Aquaboogie: A Novel in Stories illuminate the delicate balance Straight’s characters maintain as they evolve within their culture and the wider world. Her second novel is Living Large.
Visit Susan Straight’s website › From 1992 Festival ›
Elizabeth Strout
ELIZABETH STROUT is the author of three novels: Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, Abide With Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick, and her latest book, the wonderfully rich and unforgettable, Olive Kitteridge. Her short stories have been published in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker and O, The Oprah Magazine.
Visit Elizabeth Strout’s website › From 2009 Festival ›
Lalita Tademy
LALITA TADEMY, in her debut novel, Cane River, recounts with compelling detail the lives of her matriarchal ancestors who were born into slavery in pre-Civil War Louisiana. Tademy describes her historical novel, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as a work of fiction that is “deeply rooted in years of research, historical fact and family lore.” This universal story of strong-willed survivors is illustrated with documents and evocative photographs.
Visit Lalita Tademy’s website › From 2005 Festival ›
Haley Tanner
Haley Tanner’s breakout novel, Vaclav & Lena, is a magical story about the strength and endurance of love. Her poignant tale of two Russian immigrant children who meet in an ESL class in Brooklyn will steal your heart as you follow the story of these unforgettable protagonists, the endearing budding magician, Vaclav, and his “lovely assistant,” Lena.
Visit Haley Tanner’s website › From 2012 Festival ›
Diane Thomas
Diane Thomas….The success of Romancing the Stone turned this 33-year-old Long Beach screenwriter into Hollywood’s Cinderella of 1984. “Hollywood loves an overnight success, ” says Ms. Thomas, “but, as everyone knows, it’s never overnight.”
From 1985 Festival ›
Judith Thurman
Judith Thurman’s Isak Dinesen:The Life of a Storyteller is the result of penetrating research into the private world of the author of Out of Africa. This widely travelled New Yorker is a translator and a contributor to Vogue, Ms., Cosmopolitan and the Village Voice, as well as poet, anthologist and and associate producer of Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep.
From 1987 Festival ›
Miriam Toews
Miriam Toews’ recently released novel, Irma Voth, explores the inner life of a young woman living in an isolated Mennonite community. It is a similar theme to her award-winning novel A Complicated Kindness. Miriam’s other works are The Flying Troutmans, a novel that affirms the bonds of family; and Swing Low: A Life, a moving memoir about her manic-depressive father.
From 2012 Festival ›
Susan Allen Toth
Susan Allen Toth was born in Ames, Iowa in 1940. She writes of her years there with wit and an eye for remembered detail in Blooming: A Small Town Girlhood, which in 1981 received the New York Times Book Review Notable Book Award. It’s sequel, Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East, brings us universally recognized moments and characters from the tumultuous college years. Her most recent book is How to Prepare for Your High School Reunion and Other Midlife Musings.
Visit Susan Allen Toth’s website › From 1989 Festival ›
Gail Tsukiyama
GAIL TSUKIYAMA was born in San Francisco, California, to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father. Initially a poet, she now uses her cross-cultural experiences in all her novels, the latest of which is Dreaming Waters. She teaches at San Francisco State Universality and is book review editor for the on-line magazine Pacific Rim Voices.
From 2003 Festival ›
Kathleen Tyau
Reflecting her own background of mixed race and traditions, Kathleen Tyau’s widely acclaimed novels play out against the lush background of Hawaiian cultures and landscapes. The deeply layered, interwoven strands of both Makai and A Little Too Much Is Enough result in works that are, according to The Asian Reprter, “entertaining, innovative, and emotionally satisfying.”
From 2002 Festival ›
Helena Maria Viramontes
Helena Maria Viramontes, another prizewinner, brings a unique insight into Chicano Literature. Born in East Los Angeles, a lecturer and short story writer, her first book, The Moths and Other Stories, will be out this Spring.
From 1985 Festival ›
Padma Viswanathan
PADMA VISWANATHAN’s bestselling debut novel The Toss of a Lemon, was inspired by family history. It takes the reader into the private world of a Brahmin clan in early twentieth century India, a turbulent time of social and political change. At the novel’s heart is Sivakami, a young widow bound by rigorous rules, which she observes – with the exception of a single defiant act.
Visit Padma Viswanathan’s website › From 2010 Festival ›
Lane Von Herzen
Lane Von Herzen’s lyrical first novel Copper Crown portrays an interracial friendship that transcends the bigotry and violence of rural Texas in the early 1900’s. Published in 1991, it was a Literary Guild selection and a featured novel in B. Dalton’s Discover Great New Writers series. Von Herzen won the 1990 Los Angeles Arts Council Fiction Prize. That same year she received her M.F.A. degree from the University of California at Irvine.
Visit Lane Von Herzen’s website › From 1993 Festival ›
Susan Vreeland
Susan Vreeland has enjoyed a thirty-year career teaching English and ceramics while publishing newspaper pieces and short fiction. Her books about women include What Love Sees, the best seller Girl in Hyacinth Blue, and her recently released The Passion of Artemisia that explores a woman’s struggle to paint in seventeenth-century Italy.
Visit Susan Vreeland’s website › From 2002 Festival ›
Amy Waldman
In The Submission, a finalist in the Hemingway Foundation/PEN First Fiction Award, Amy Waldman creates a fascinating look at the jury’s selection in an anonymous competition for the 911 memorial. A Muslim-American wins and the jury goes into a tailspin. Waldman eloquently considers the multiple issues that spring from this event.
Visit Amy Waldman’s website › From 2013 Festival ›
Joyce Weatherford
A finalist for the Willa Cather Award, JOYCE WEATHERFORD’s debut novel, Heart of the Beast, has been lauded as “not a book, but a spell, an act of magic.” This saga of the American West told from a female perspective comes alive with fiercely rich details grounded in Weatherford’s own experiences growing up on a ranch in eastern Oregon.
From 2003 Festival ›
Isabel Wilkerson
The Warmth of Other Suns, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, is an epic narrative focusing on the lives of three African Americans who represent the stories of millions who migrated from the South from 1915 to 1970. A major part of American history, this great migration has been called the most underrated story of the 20th century.
Visit Isabel Wilkerson’s website › From 2012 Festival ›