Begum Rokeya was a leading Muslim feminist writer and social worker in undivided Bengal during the early 20th century. She fought for gender equality and established the first school for Muslim girls, which still exists today. Rokeya was born in 1880 in Bangladesh during British colonial rule. Her family were orthodox Muslims, and so women …
Zelda Fitzgerald was an American novelist and socialite known as “the first American Flapper”. She was a huge influence on the work of her husband, author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who plagiarised her letters and diary to use in his own work and based many of his literary characters on her and her personal experiences. Fitzgerald …
Harper Lee was an American novelist best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. The book has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee was born Nelle Harper Lee in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama to Amasa Coleman Lee and Francis Cunningham “Finch” Lee. Finch Lee was a lawyer, and while Lee …
Alice Walker is an American novelist, story story writer, poet and civil rights activist. She is best known for her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Walker was born in 1944 in Putnam County, Georgia. Walker lived under Jim Crow Laws, but her parents refused to …
Zadie Smith is a British novelist, essayist, and short story writer best known for her novel, White Teeth. Smith was born in 1975 in London, England. Her mother, Yvonne Bailey had grown up in Jamaica and moved to England in 1969 and her father Harvey Smith was English. As a child, Smith enjoyed tap dancing …
Octavia E. Butler was a world renowned African-American science fiction novelist and the first African-American woman to gain popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction writer. Her novels include Patternmaster, Kindred, Dawn and Parable of the Sower. Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her father died at an early age, and …
Elizabeth Gaskell was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victoria era. She is best known for her novels Cranford and North and South, and for writing the biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson in 1810 in Chelsea, London. Her mother, Elizabeth died when she was young and …
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She is best known for her 1984 novel Blood and Guts in High School. Asker was born in New York City in 1947. Her father left the family before Acker was born, and her mother remarried quickly. Acker grew …
Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer and author. She was the first woman to be awarded a J.D.S degree from Yale and the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She also co-founded NOW, the National Organization for Women. Murray was born in 1910 in Baltimore, …
Elizabeth Raffald was an English businesswoman, best known for her 1769 book The Experienced English Housekeeper. Raffald was born Elizabeth Whitaker in 1733 in Doncaster, England. Her father, John Whittaker was a schoolteacher and because of this, Raffald and her sisters were given the rare opportunity (for girls at the time) to learn to read …