Women Who Write | A Place, A Space, A Voice | Louisville, Kentucky 
By Susan E. Lindsey
Time magazine recently published a list of “female authors you should be reading.” The list includes: Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch), Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah), Eleanor Catton (The Rehearsal and The Luminaries), Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory and The Dew Breaker), Emma Donoghue (Room and Frog Music), Louise Erdrich (13 novels, including The Plague of Doves), Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things), Sheila Heti (How Should a Person Be), A. M. Homes (May We Be Forgiven), Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Elliott Holt (You Are One of Them), Rachel Kushner (The Flamethrowers), Claire Messud (The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs), Lorrie Moore (Birds of America and Bark), Alice Monro (short stories, including Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage), Karen Russell (Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove), Taiye Selasi (Ghana Must Go), Zadie Smith (White Teeth), Cheryl Strayed (Wild), J. Courtney Sullivan (Commencement and Maine and The Engagements), Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement), and Margaret Wrinkle (Wash).
Our list of great Kentucky women writers would include Bobbie Ann Mason, Sue Grafton, Sena Jeter Naslund, Harriett Simpson Arnow, playwright Marsha Norman, journalist Helen Thomas, Janice Holt Giles, poet bell hooks, Barbara Kingsolver, and George Ella Lyon. Surely there are dozens, even hundreds, more. When you buy books, support the women who write.