Patti Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist. She became a high influential part of the New York City punk rock scene after the release of her 1975 album Horses. Smith was a tomboy as a child, experiencing gender confusion because she did not fit in with the social expectations of femininity. She …
Ida B Wells was an American journalist, suffragist, sociologist and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Wells was born a slave in Mississipi in 1862. Six months after her birth slaves were decreed free by the Union thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells faced racial prejudice and discriminatory rules because of her race. …
Betty Friedan was an American writer, women’s rights activist, and feminist. She co-founded the National Organisation for Women (NOW). Friedan was involved with the school newspaper while at Peoria High School, after her application to write her own column was turned down she and 6 friends launched a literary magazine called ‘Tide’. She graduated from …
Sylvia Plath was an American Academic, Author, Editor and Poet best known for her novel ‘The Bell Jar’, and for her poetry collections ‘The Colossus’ and ‘Ariel’. Plath showed an aptitude for writing from a young age and was writing complete poems from age 5. At age 8 she had a poem published in the …
Gloria Steinem is is a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organiser who became nationally recognised as a leader and spokeswoman for the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 70s. Steinem was given her first serious assignment as a freelance writer by Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker. Her first draft on the …
Nellie Bly was the pen name of the American journalist Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. She was a pioneer in the field of journalism and widely known for completing a round the world trip in 72 days. Bly’s first job as a journalist was for the The Pittsburgh Dispatch. She got the job after writing an infuriated …
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher and advocate of Women’s rights. Wollstonecraft was brought up by an abusive father whom she left at age 17 when her mother died. She set up a school in Newington Green with her sister, who had fled an abusive marriage. She used this experience to write the pamphlet …