Mary Shelle y
Available to read:
Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Gothic
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
Mary Shelley was born 30th August 1797 in London, England. She was the daughter of feminist philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft was a radical freethinker for her time, and in 1792 published the hugely influential feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Mary’s mother died shortly after her birth, but it is clear she had a strong influence on Mary’s writing.
Mary started writing Frankenstein aged 18 whilst visiting Lake Geneva with future husband Percy Shelley and poet Lord Byron. The book was published anonymously on 1st January 1818. It received negative critiques due to being written by a woman. In April 1818, a review in The British Critic wrote:
“ The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”
Frankenstein gained popularity in 1823 when it was adapted into a stage play by Richard Brinsley Peake. The book was published for the first time in Mary ’s name later that year.
The book’s themes mainly focus on loss and bereavement. The book displays the importance of a maternal figure in childhood, something Mary did not have. It could also represent Mary’s feelings of guilt after losing her first daughter, Clara, who died just two weeks after being born.
Mary ’s influence on pop culture has been prolific. Many books and films would simply not exist without Frankenstein, such as The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Edward Scissorhands, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Lilo and Stitch, just to name a few. To this day, Frankenstein still sells roughly 40,000 copies every year.
Maya Angel ou
Available to read:
Genres: Poetry, Non-Fiction
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A writer, poet, civil rights activist, musician and film director, Maya Angelou had an extraordinary life and a profound influence on popular culture. Maya was born in St. Louis, USA. From an early age, Maya broke the boundaries of what young women could do. At 16, she became the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Whilst at this job, she was told by her mother that she would need to arrive early and work harder than others.
In 1960, after meeting Martin Luther King Jr., Maya became a fundraiser for civil rights organisation Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She moved to Ghana in 1962 and became an editor for The African Review and writer for The Ghanaian Times. She also became close friends with Malcolm X, and in 1965 returned to the U.S to help him build the civil rights organisation, Organization of Afro- American Unity. Maya wrote her first autobiography in 1969, I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book was an international best-seller and has sold more than 1 million copies.
In 1972 Maya became the first black woman to have a screenplay produced, when Georgia, Georgia was released. Her career in film and TV spanned decades, in which time she was a musical composer, writer, director and actress. She won the Audience Choice Award for Best Feature for her 1998 film Down in the Delta at the Chicago International Film Festival.
In 1993 she performed her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton. The poem later won a Grammy Award. She would go on to support Hilary Clinton and Barrack Obama in the 2008 US Presidential Election and stated, “We are growing up beyond the idiocies of racism and sexism”.
Maya passed away in 2014. Her memorial included speeches from Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.
Ryka Aoki
Available to read:
Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, LGBTQ+, Non-Fiction, Poetry
“ For a non - passing trans person, there is no safe space.
It is not who we are kissing, but our very heights, our voices, and the size of our hands that catalyze hatred and violence.”
Ryka Aoki is a trans Asian American writer. She has been nominated for several prestigious awards, twice being the finalist in the Lambda Literary Awards. Her most recent book, Light from Uncommon Stars, was nominated Best Science Fiction in 2021 by Goodreads and was also nominated for a Hugo Award in 2022 for Best Novel.
Ryka’s writing career began in 2010, when she co-authored Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. The book aimed to collect and contextualise the work of this generation’s trans and genderqueer authors. In 2015, when asked why she likes to write, Ryka said:
If a trans musician can make the audience cry by playing Chopin, how else, but as a human, can she be regarded? And if a book written by a queer trans Asian American can make you think of your own beaches, your own sunsets, or the dear departed grandmother you loved so much and even now find yourself speaking to, then what more powerful statement of our common humanity can there be?
Light From Uncommon Stars has had an excellent critical reception ever since it was published in 2021. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, said about Light from Uncommon Stars, “When was the last time I read a book this mind-blowingly original?” Ryka described her book as:
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Light
From Uncommon Stars is a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Available to read:
Genres: Historical Fiction, Short Stories
“Remember, be a good person, not a good girl. Good girls suffer a lot in this life.”
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist, who primarily writes Historical Fiction and short stories. Her book The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize in 2021 and was nominated for The Diversity Book Awards, Encore Prize and James Tait Black Prize.
Jennifer has a unique style of writing based on Ugandan oral traditions. She uses a blend of idioms, myth, folktale, and history, and her books have been described as captivating, multifaceted, poetic, and poignant.
Jennifer’s earlier book Kintu starts in the year 1750 and spans roughly 250 years of Ugandan history and culture. The book touches on subjects such as politics, religion, social structure and has been described as “culturally rich”.
Juno Dawso n
Available to read:
Genres: Fantasy, LGBTQ+, Non-Fiction, Young Adult, Romance, Horror
“ I dare to dream of a world where people can dress, speak and behave how they want, free from mockery, derision, judgement, harassment and danger. This is what I want. Who’s with me?”
Juno Dawson is a trans author who writes non-fiction and YA literature. She was born in the UK and is currently a School Role Model for the LGBTQIA+ charity Stonewall.
Juno’s writing career began in 2012, when she released Hollow Pike whilst working as a teacher. The book was a success, and she left her job to become a full-time writer. Her book This Book Is Gay was published in 2014.
After a town in Alaska started a petition to have the book removed from a public library, Dawson responded, “there is still such small-mindedness and hatred left to contend with”.
In 2015, Dawson came out as a transgender woman. She began hormonal transition in 2016 and wrote a column in the magazine Glamour about her experience transitioning. Dawson has been praised for her inclusion of trans and LGBTQIA+ characters and representing the community. Some of her titles include The Gender Games, Proud and What’s the T? The Guide To All Things Trans and/ or Nonbinary.
Hilary Mantel
Available to read:
Genres: Historical Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Non-Fiction “ Her oppression is universal, her story cyclical; construed less as a human being than as an animal or force of nature, her place is outside history.”
Two-time winner of the Booker Prize, Hilary Mantel was an incredibly successful Historical Fiction writer. Her most famous books are the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, fictional stories about the chief minister to King Henry VIII. The series has sold more than 1.5 million copies.
In 2003, Hilary ’s memoir Giving Up the Ghost won Book of the Year by mental health charity MIND. The book explores Hilary’s life, including her physical and mental health struggles with her diagnosis of severe Endometriosis. Endometriosis is a condition which affects the womb and can cause chronic pain and affect fertility. When Hilary first sought medical help, her condition was treated as a “psychiatric illness”, and she was given “antipsychotic drugs” which produced psychotic symptoms. She did not seek medical advice for many years afterwards. She would later become a Patron of Endometriosis charity SHE Trust.
As a result, many of Hilary’s books revolve around the theme of women’s bodies. In the New Yorker, Hilary wrote: Let the woman choose, if the choice is hers. The state should not stalk her. The priest should seal his lips. The law should not interfere.
Celeste Ng
Available to read:
Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Dystopian, Science Fiction
“ Before that she hadn’t realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it.”
Celeste Ng was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 30th July 1980. Her parents moved from Hong Kong in the 1960’s. Her father worked as a physicist at NASA and her mother was a chemist teaching at Cleveland State University.
Celeste Ng has been a New York Times bestseller, producer of an Emmy nominated TV series, and educator at the University of Michigan.
Her first novel Everything I Never Told You, spent 48 weeks on the bestseller list and sold more than 2 million copies. Her second book, Little Fires Everywhere, was picked up by Hulu and made into a mini-series produced by and starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. It has been incredibly successful, being nominated for a plethora of awards including 5 Emmys.
The themes in Celeste’s books usually revolve around family dynamics, suburban life, and attitudes towards race in America.
Silvia Moreno - Garcia
Available to read:
Genres: Horror, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy, Thriller, Romance
“Our bodies hide so many mysteries and they tell so many stories without a single word. ”
Mexican by birth, Siliva Moreno-Garcia is a writer of horror, science fiction, and historical fiction living in Vancouver, Canada.
Silvia began her career publishing short stories in various fiction magazines and is now the publisher for Innsmouth Free Press, a publisher dedicated to horror, dark fiction, and weird fiction.
Silvia released her first novel, Signal to Noise, in 2015. The books protagonist, Meche, is an awkward fifteen- year-old from Mexico City who discovers how to cast spells using music. With her friends, Sebastian and Daniela, they attempt to piece their broken families back together and find love. The book was nominated for numerous awards, an impressive feat for Silvia’s debut novel.
Mexican Gothic is by far Silvia’s most popular novel to date. Released in 2020, the book won the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel, Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, the Aurora Award for Best Novel, and the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror. The book follows Noemí, who goes on a rescue mission after receiving a frantically written letter from her newlywed cousin, regarding a mysterious doom. Noemí sets off for the Mexican countryside, undeterred by her cousins menacing husband, nor his father, the ancient patriarch, not even the house itself, which begins to invade Noemí’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
The book’s themes are best summed up by the below quote from a review by Chai on Goodreads:
The horror in Mexican Gothic is so poignant, so stark and oppressively bleak precisely because it’s recognizable. It’s racism and xenophobia and white supremacy recast as eldritch nastiness.
N.K. Jemisin
Available to read:
Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Dystopian, Short Stories, LGTBQ+
“For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.”
Nora Keita Jemisin was born in Iowa and grew up in New York. Before pursuing writing full-time, Jemisin studied a degree in Psychology and worked as a psychologist and counsellor.
Jemisin first major success came in 2009, when her short story Non-Zero Probabilities was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo Best Short Story Awards. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, was published the following year and nominated for a Hugo and Nebula Award.
2015 saw Jemisin release The Fifth Season, the first book in the Broken Earth Trilogy. The book went onto win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making Jemisin the first African American writer to win a Hugo award in that category. The following two novels in the trilogy also won the award, making N.K. Jemisin the first author to win the award in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win the award for all three novels in a trilogy. The trilogy has since been picked up for a film adaption by Sony’s Tristar in a 7-figure deal.
Jemisin’s books have been praised for their dynamic and expansive world building. She is an incredibly versatile writer, bridging the gap between styles and genres effortlessly. Writing science -fiction and fantasy, Jemisin is able to touch on a variety of moral topics including climate change, genocide, systematic oppression, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-racism, and so much more.
Nawal El Saadawi
Available to read:
Genres: Feminism, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Biography, History
“ They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous ”
Nawal El Saadawi was an Egyptian writer, activist, and physician. She wrote numerous books on the subject of women in Islam and women’s rights, focusing on the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). She held honorary degrees on three continents and won the Seán MacBride Peace Prize in 2012.
Nawal was born in the small village of Kafr Tahla on 22nd October 1931. Despite describing her parents as relatively progressive, at the age of just six Nawal was the victim of female genital mutilation (FGM). From an early age Nawal objected to the inequality women experienced where she lived and was very outspoken on this issue.
In 1955 Nawal graduated as a medical doctor from Cairo University. Through her practice she observed the hardships that women faced including domestic abuse, and attributed them to cultural, patriarchal, class, and imperialist oppression. She would go on to become the Director of the Ministry of Public Health.
In 1972 Nawal published Women and Sex (
) which confronted and contextualised various aggressions perpetrated against women’s bodies, including FGM. The book became a foundational text of second-wave feminism. After the book’s publication and due to Nawal’s fierce activism for women’s rights, she was dismissed from her position at the Ministry of Health as well as at the Medical Association in Egypt.
Her most famous work, Woman at Point Zero
), is a novel written in Arabic and published in 1977. It is based on Nawal’s meeting with a female prisoner in Qanatir Prison and is the first-person account of Firadaus, a murderess who has agreed to tell her life story before her execution.
Marjane Satrapi
“ Culture and education are lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.
Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht and raised in Tehran, Iran. During her youth, Satrapi was exposed to the growing brutalities of the various regimes in the country. Many of her family and friends were persecuted, arrested, and murdered. Marjane’s parents encouraged her to be strong-willed and defend her rights but grew concerned for her safety in her teens when she got into trouble with the police for disregarding modesty codes and buying banned music. She went to live with a family friend in Vienna, Austria, but was made homeless due to various circumstances. After a nearly fatal bout of bronchitis, she returned to Iran and obtained a master’s degree.
Marjane became world-famous overnight after her autobiographical graphic novels, Persepolis 1 and Persepolis 2, were published between 2000 and 2004. The critically acclaimed comics are autobiographical and describe her childhood in Iran during the Islamic revolution and her adolescence in Europe. The comic series has sold more than 2 million copies and has been adapted into an award-winning film.
Marjane’s writing has inspired a whole generation of women and has raised awareness about feminist ideas, the hegemonic power of the state, confronting Western stereotypes, and fear surrounding the Middle East.
Isabel Allende
Available to read:
Genres: Magical Realism, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Romance
“Write what should not be forgotten.”
Born in Lima, Peru, Isabel Allende is a Chilean-American writer who is considered to be the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author. It is estimated that she has sold over 77 million copies of her books in more than 42 languages.
Isabel spent much of her early life moving from place to place, as her father-in-law was a diplomat appointed to Bolivia, Beirut, and Argentina. Early in her career she was employed to translate novels from English to Spanish, however she was fired for making unauthorised changes to the dialogue of the heroines to make them sound more intelligent and independent. She would go on to be an editor for magazines Paula and Mampato.
In 1973 Chilean President Salvador Allende (Isabel’s fathers’ cousin) was overthrown in a coup. She helped people on the “wanted list” escape the country and was later added to the list, causing her to flee to Venezuela. Isabel spent 13 years there, and during this time wrote her debut novel The House of the Spirits. The book was written about her dying grandfather in a hope to “keep him alive, at least in spirit”. It was an instant best-seller, and the critically acclaimed novel launched Isabel into instant stardom.
Isabel has gone on to publish over 20 more distinct works of fiction and a handful of non-fiction works, winning an armful of accolades along the way. She is considered a founder and master of the magical realism genre, and at the age of 82 is still publishing new material with her 2023 novel The Wind Knows
My Name.
Melissa Lucashenko
Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, LGBTQ+, Romance
“Nothing alone, nothing ever in isolation, but always as part of a larger whole extending out to the air and the stars and the planets.”
Melissa Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian writer. She was born in Brisbane, Australia, and is of Bundjalung and European ancestry. When Melissa started writing seriously, she said that “there was still a glaring hole in Australian literature”, with no prominent Aboriginal voices. She took influence from Australian books such as The Bone People by Keri Hulme and Monkey Grip by Helen Garner, and Indigenous American authors such as Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie.
Her most famous book, Too Much Lip, is a foray into the harder edges of Aboriginal life. The book was inspired by the black and queer women who Melissa knows personally who’ve done time in jail or very nearly done so, and touches on subjects like the law, racist violence, and family struggles. It’s a gritty, violent, and real novel with humour dotted throughout to allow the reader some reprieve. A cross between Beverley Hillbillies and Once Were Warriors, this novel is a shocking insight into the lives of people who live on the edge of society in Australia.