LITERARY WOMEN
Celebrating Women Authors Since 1982
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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 ›
Madhuri Vijay
In her debut novel, The Far Field, Madhuri Vijay follows a young Indian woman on an odyssey for a lost figure from her childhood to seek resolution of uncertainties about her deceased mother. It is a journey that takes her from her privileged life in Southern India to a remote Himalayan village in the troubled region of Kashmir; and unwittingly, to the brink of a devastating political and personal reckoning.
Purchase from Creating Conversations › Visit Madhuri Vijay’s website ›From 2020 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 ›
Karen Thompson Walker
An ordinary town is transformed by a mysterious illness that triggers perpetual sleep in this mesmerizing novel from bestselling author Karen Thomas Walker. Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life—in our waking days and, perhaps even more, in our dreams.
Purchase from Creating Conversastions › Visit Karen Thompson Walker’s website ›From 2020 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 ›
Elaine Weiss
Nashville, August 1920. It is the last stand for the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote; Tennessee, the best hope for the final vote needed to ratify the amendment, becomes the battleground. In her book, The Woman’s Hour, Elaine Weiss tells the dramatic story of the vicious political battle waged that hot summer between the suffragists and their fierce opponents. Intrigue, bribery, betrayals and bigotry abound.
Purchase from Creating Conversations › Visit Elaine Weiss’s website › From 2020 Festival ›
Dorothy Wickenden
From the intimate perspective of three friends and neighbors—the “agitators” of the title—acclaimed author Dorothy Wickenden tells the fascinating stories of abolition, the Underground Railroad, the early women’s rights movement, and the Civil War. These crucial American stories are enriched by glimpsing them through the friendship of these exceptional women who spent decades violating the laws and conventions of their time.
Visit Dorothy Wickenden’s website › From 2022 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 ›
Jincy Willet
JINCY WILLETT is a Southern California author living in Escondido. Her novel, The Writing Class is a clever mystery set in a writing class comprised of adult students with varying degrees of writing ability. The reader learns a lot about the craft of writing while laughing at the hilarious situations and wry, witty writing. Willett’s other books include Winner of the National Book Award and Jenny and the Jaws of Life.
Visit Jincy Willet’s website › From 2010 Festival ›
Jacqueline Winspear
JACQUELINE WINSPEAR is the author of the award-winning Maisie Dobbs series. Maisie is a one-of-a-kind psychological investigator who has captured the attention of mystery lovers and history buffs alike. In the fourth installment, Messenger of Truth, Winspear explores both the sinister aspects of the London art world and the bitter legacy of World War I.
Visit Jacqueline Winspear’s website › From 2007 Festival ›
Meg Wolitzer
MEG WOLITZER has published seven novels, including The Position, which was long-listed for the UK’s Orange Prize, The Wife and Surrender; Dorothy. She has taught creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Skidmore College, Columbia University and 92nd Street Y of New York City. Her new novel, The Ten-Year Nap, will be published in March.
Visit Meg Wolitzer’s website › From 2008 Festival ›
Jan Wong
Jan Wong, Canadian of Chinese descent, entered China in 1972 as a starry-eyed Maoist to join the Cultural Revolution. Red China Blues entertains and enlightens us with Wong’s two journeys: as a Beijing University student expressing solidarity with the masses; later as a journalist viewing socio-political change.
Visit Jan Wong’s website › From 1998 Festival ›
Marilyn Yalom
Marilyn Yalom of Stanford’s Center for Research on Women, edited Women Writers of the West Coast, public dialogues and candid discussion of ten writers sharing “rare fragments of their life stories as well as insights into their writing techniques.” Dr. Yalom is also the author of Maternity, Morality and the Literature of Madness.
From 1985 Festival ›
Mitsuye Yamada
Born in Japan, raised in Seattle, survivor of an Idaho internment camp, Mitsuye Yamada reflects a unique cultural heritage in her collections of poetry and prose. Camp Notes and Other Poems and Desert Run: Poems and Stories draw on her experiences as an Asian-American woman and an advocate for human rights. Said one reviewer, “Yamada’s poetry and prose resonate with wit, power and poignancy.”
Visit Mitsuye Yamada’s website › From 1992 Festival ›
Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers and Blu’s Hanging, feature girl heroines speaking in pidgin, the dialect of impoverished 18th-century Hawaiian plantation workers that filtered down through multi-ethnic generations. Poetic and salty, her work reveals a darker side of the Hawaiian paradise.
From 1998 Festival ›
Karen Tei Yamashita
Karen Tei Yamashita’s first novel, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, received the American Book Award for fiction in 1991. She has also conceived and written performance-art pieces for the Japanese-American Museum and the Taper, Too. Currently she is at work on Burajiru, a novel about Japanese immigration to Brazil scheduled to be published next fall.
From 1992 Festival ›
Belle Yang
Belle Yang’s first book, Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders, is an enchanting and beautiful work. Her vibrant illustrations brighten the stories inspired by her father’s boyhood memories of growing up in Manchuria. At first the characters of these stories became the subjects of her art, but Yang felt she needed to do more than paint to express their voices. So the painter became a storyteller and the paintings and the stories flow together to create this extraordinary book.
Visit Belle Yang’s website › From 1996 Festival ›
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Genre-Straddling For Fun And Profit
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro writes science fiction, mystery, historical as well as juvenile fiction, and is the author of The Saint Germain Chronicles and The God Forsaken, and many others.