aconissa:

aconissa:

aconissa:

aconissa:

Great question! This will be a fairly incomplete list, as I’ve tried to condense it and there are many seminal female writers whose work I’ve yet to read. The ones in italics focus on female perspectives and issues

Fiction:

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
• The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
• Girl Meets Boy by Jeanette Winterson
• Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
• The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland
• The Girls by Emma Cline
• The Charioteer by Mary Renault
• The Alexander the Great trilogy by Mary Renault
• The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
• Carol (or The Price of Salt) by Patricia Highsmith
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Non-fiction:

• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
• Sister, Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
• The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper
  
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• A Vindication on the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
• Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila J. Rupp
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
• Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
  

Poets:

• Rupi Kaur (particularly the collection Milk and Honey)
  
• Sylvia Plath
  
• Anne Carson
• Carol Ann Duffy (particularly the collection The World’s Wife)
• Christina Rossetti
• Margaret Atwood
• Adrienne Rich
• Audre Lorde
• Sappho (particularly the Anne Carson translations)

Updated for 2018!

Fiction:

• Circe by Madeline Miller
  
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (graphic novel)
• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins (stories)
• The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Regeneration by Pat Barker
• The Power by Naomi Alderman
• How to be Both by Ali Smith
• The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories by Angela Carter
• Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nichols
• Bodies of Water by V. H. Leslie
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer
• Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Non-fiction:

• Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy
• Women & Power by Mary Beard
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Updated (slightly late) for 2019!

Fiction:

• America Is Not The Heart by Elaine Castillo
• The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
• Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver
• Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson
• Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
• The Farm by Joanne Ramos
• Crimson by Niviaq Korneliussen
• The Binding by Bridget Collins
• A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
• Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
  
• Last Words From Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin
  

Non-Fiction:

• It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race edited by Mariam Khan
• Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
• In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson
• Gentleman Jack: A Biography of Anne Lister by Angela Steidele

Updated for 2020 💕

Fiction:

• The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• Things We Say In The Dark by Kirsty Logan
• In At The Deep End by Kate Davies
• Fen by Daisy Johnson
• The Girl In Red by Christina Henry
• From The Wreck by Jane Rawson
• The Last by Hanna Jameson
• Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Non-fiction:

• In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
• Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
• Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger & Melanie R. Anderson
• A Woman In The Polar Night by Christiane Ritter
• Slavery At Sea by Sowande’ M. Mustakeem
• Educated by Tara Westover