Female Authors to Add to Your TBR
I grew up in the dial-up age with a video game-obsessed brother and a library with funding problems; I thought the only women who wrote books were the ones who wrote Harry Potter, Babysitter’s Club, Junie B Jones, and the American Girl books. Thanks to age and the wondrous world of WiFi, I’ve discovered a wide breadth of female authors from all over the world. Since we’re celebrating the world this month on MuggleNet, here is a list of female authors with a global perspective whose works are worth adding to your TBR pile. I created this list with no rank or order in mind since each author has their own voice and perspective to contribute to the world. This list is by no means exhaustive – just some of the books I have read and enjoyed.
Louise Erdrich
Her writing is very rich in detail and is filled with emotion. Erdrich was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Plague of Doves. Her 2013 novel The Round House received the National Book Award for Fiction. Erdrich writes novels and owns a bookshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota to elevate Native American voices.
You can find The Plague of Doves here:
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You can find The Round House here:
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Betsey Cornwell
Cornwell has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for her feminist and queer twists on fairy tales and folk stories. Her novel The Forest Queen remakes Robin Hood with a female protagonist and an interesting twist to the Sheriff of Nottingham that sets the story up very differently from the original tale.
You can find The Forest Queen here:
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie won the McArthur Genius Grant in 2008 after publishing novels written with such rich detail the reader can easily envision the scenes in their mind. In more recent years she has written about race and gender in books such as the novel Americanah and the nonfiction essay We Should All Be Feminists.
You can find Americanah here:
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You can find We Should All Be Feminists here:
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Danika Stone
Stone is another writer not limited by genre. She is a familiar face at cons because of her love of fandom that is seen in her book All the Feels. She has an adult thriller series under the name DK Stone. That series, plus the novel Switchback, takes place in the Canadian Rockies. Stone writes great dialogue and has very relatable characters.
You can find All the Feels here:
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You can find Switchback here:
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Rigoberta Menchú Tum
She won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights activism for indigenous Guatemalans. Academics have been skeptical of her book, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, because she wrote both her experiences and those of others using the same voice and point of view. But the book spurred international understanding of the Guatemalan Civil War.
You can find I, Rigoberta Menchu here:
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Dame Mary Beard
Dame Beard has written so much about a wide variety of aspects of ancient Roman life the Queen gave her a knighthood for it. Her book Women and Power: A Manifesto is a short but powerful read. The revised edition added content that connected the #MeToo movement to Dame Beard’s work.
You can find Women and Power: A Manifesto here:
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SK Ali
Ali’s first book Saints and Misfits was on many Top 10 lists and was featured by the New York Public Library as the “Best YA Novel of 2017.” She teamed up with Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammed to write the children’s book The Proudest Blue. Ali writes with such honesty and emotion that you are sucked into the story in mere moments.
You can find Saints and Misfits here:
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You can find The Proudest Blue here:
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Louise O’Neill
O’Neill is an Irish feminist writer whose book Asking For It has been turned into a documentary and stage play. Her works are considered to be for young adult audiences. About two years ago I read her book The Surface Breaks, which is a feminist reimagining of The Little Mermaid, when I was ensconced in adulthood – and I still think about its messages and themes on a regular basis.
You can find Asking for It here:
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You can find The Surface Breaks here:
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Blair Imani
A lot of people know Imani as an influencer, advocate, and political organizer. But she is also an author of the books Modern HERstory and Making Our Way Home. These books are about all the events and individuals that greatly impacted minorities and that people should have learned but did not. But unlike the writing in most history books, Imani writes in a way that keeps readers fully engaged throughout the whole book.
You can find Modern HERstory here:
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You can find Making Our Way Home here:
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Sandi Toksvig
Yes, the Sandi Toksvig of The Great British Bake-Off and QI fame. Toksvig has written books for young and old on a wide range of topics and ideas. Her memoir Between the Stops: The View of Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus is sprinkled with anecdotes about her life and facts about the world.
You can find Between the Stops here:
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There are many others that could be added to this list. Who are some female authors you would add to this list?
