January: Celebrating female authors and women’s fiction

You may be aware of some of the changes planned for Writing to be Read for 2019, such as the new look and my newest team member, Robbie Cheadle.  If  you missed it, you can learn more in my post Writing to be Read: 2018 full of surprises – 2019 promises more. One such change that wasn’t really mentioned was that my posts will coincide with a monthly theme. In January, to kick off the new year right, we’ll be celebrating women authors and women’s fiction.

Jane Austen

There have always been female authors, although in the early days they were rare. Jane’s Austen’s Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811 under the  pen name of “A Lady”. Her name never appeared on any of her books during her lifetime.

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1816, when she was eighteen years old, inspired by a gloomy night of telling ghost stories in a mansion in the Swiss Alps.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott used the pen name A.M. Bernard, and she only wrote Little Women under pressure from her publisher and her father.

Virginia Woolf

The twentieth century brought us the feminist writings of Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood, the modernist short fiction of Katherine Mansfield, and the African-American literature of Toni Morrison, although originally not recieved well.  Women authors today are easier to find and generally accepted, but do they still face many of the same stigmas their predecessors did?

That is one question this month’s Monday posts will be exploring. See last Monday’s interview with western author Loretta Miles Tollefson for a view of a female author of the western genre. Next Monday, be sure to catch the first segment of my new monthly blog series, Chatting with the Pros, where I will be interviewing science fiction and women’s fiction author Barbara Chepaitis for some insight into her views on women’s fiction and female authors in today’s publishing industry. I do hope you will join us Monday’s in January on Writing to be Read.

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