Ursula le Guin is a great SF writer
Astrid Lindgren, her books are translated to 95 different languages and sold over 160 million copies. Probably the worlds most beloved children’s book author.
A lot of greats have been mentioned already, so I’ll add Han Kang to the mix.
- Rosa Luxemburg: Great German socialist thinker and revolutionary
- Emma Goldman: Lithuanian Jewish Anarchist and feminist thinker
- Voltairine de Cleyre: American Anarchist and political thinker
- Luisa Capetillo : Puerto Rican labor organizer and anarcha-feminist
I don’t have ‘best female author of all time’ but I do have favorite writers some of which happen to be female. I don’t usually split them by their sex (nor by their height, distaste for bananas, or whatever) as for me they’re all in the same ‘people who have a great time staining paper with ink making me a happy reader’ league but here it is, in absolutely no order beside the first two, as there is them and then there is all the others:
- Virginia Woolf (the only reason I would love to be able to travel in time is to meet her),
- Jane Austen,
- Edit: (how could I forget) Emily Dickinson!
- Sylvia Plath,
- Shirley Jackson (if you have not already, go read The Haunting of Hill House, it’s considered a classic for reasons),
- la marquise de Sévigné (she wrote letters and they make for a great read, no idea if it’s available in English),
- Margaret Atwood (imho she deserves a Nobel Prize, next to Woolf and Austen),
- Mary Shelley (like mentioned by others already, she well deserves to be read and would still have a lot to teach to some contemporary authors too, imho).
- I love reading Lizza Tuttle. Her horror short stories are different.
- In the same vein, I also quite like Mélanie Fazzi (who is also a translator of some of Tuttle’s stories, btw). But I can’t find that much more female writers in that specific genre (a lot more males do come to my mind).
Being French, I realize I have not listed that many French female writers I would consider a favorite. But they are a few I would consider excellent read nonetheless:
- La comtesse de Ségur (one of my childhood companion next to, say, Verne and Doyle),
- Simone de Beauvoir,
- (very) few pages of Marguerite Duras,
- Fred Vargas.
- To which I would also add Pauline Réage, because I think her ‘Histoire d’O’ is well worth reading for anyone into erotica.
- At one time, I also quite liked Joëlle Wintrebert (scifi) but I have not felt like reading her for a very long time so I could not tell.
Agatha Christie. While not quite what I like there is no denying her success.
Fiction
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Ursula K. LeGuin
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Octavia Butler
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Margaret Atwood
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Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)
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Suzanne Collins (YA)
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Lois Lowry (YA)
Non-Fiction
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Naomi Klein
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Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)
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Angela Y. Davis
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Tanya Talaga
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bell hooks
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Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Tamsyn Muir comes to mind for her excellent locked tomb series
I have no idea what this question is asking but I like Donna Tartt
Poets are authors too, so I’m tossing mine in for Emily Dickinson
Ursula K LeGuin?
Sorry, but read “Walk To The end Of The World” by Suzy McKee Charnas,
/thread
No love for Robin Hobb?
I don’t know about “of all time” but “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett should be required reading.
Ellen Booraem (YA, she’s great at writing books from a totally different angle), Oyinkan Braithwaite (she’s only written two books so far but they’re great), Katharine Kerr.
Toni Morrison
Angela Carter
Virginia Wolfe
Shirley Jackson
Octavia Butler
