Tanith Lee, Mary Gentle, Melanie Rawn deserve mentions. (MZB I haven’t been able to read since learning…) Anais Nin was mostly intentionally writing trash but is fun

I have no idea what this question is asking but I like Donna Tartt

metacommantary: "

Who is the best X of all time?"

All answers are about am*rican or british X.

This thread also made me realise that I do not read that many woman-writ books.

answer:

I enjoyed books by : Ursula K. Le Guin, JK Rowling, Patricia Ann McKillip, and Kathy Reichs.

I don’t have ‘best female author of all time’ but I do have favorite writers some of which happen to be female. I don’t usually split them by their sex (nor by their height, distaste for bananas, or whatever) as for me they’re all in the same ‘people who have a great time staining paper with ink making me a happy reader’ league but here it is, in absolutely no order beside the first two, as there is them and then there is all the others:

• Virginia Woolf (the only reason I would love to be able to travel in time is to meet her),
• Jane Austen,
• Edit: (how could I forget) Emily Dickinson!
• Sylvia Plath,
• Shirley Jackson (if you have not already, go read The Haunting of Hill House, it’s considered a classic for reasons),
• la marquise de Sévigné (she wrote letters and they make for a great read, no idea if it’s available in English),
• Margaret Atwood (imho she deserves a Nobel Prize, next to Woolf and Austen),
• Mary Shelley (like mentioned by others already, she well deserves to be read and would still have a lot to teach to some contemporary authors too, imho).
• I love reading Lizza Tuttle. Her horror short stories are different.
• In the same vein, I also quite like Mélanie Fazzi (who is also a translator of some of Tuttle’s stories, btw). But I can’t find that much more female writers in that specific genre (a lot more males do come to my mind).

Being French, I realize I have not listed that many French female writers I would consider a favorite. But they are a few I would consider excellent read nonetheless:

• La comtesse de Ségur (one of my childhood companion next to, say, Verne and Doyle),
• Simone de Beauvoir,
• (very) few pages of Marguerite Duras,
• Fred Vargas.
• To which I would also add Pauline Réage, because I think her ‘Histoire d’O’ is well worth reading for anyone into erotica.
• At one time, I also quite liked Joëlle Wintrebert (scifi) but I have not felt like reading her for a very long time so I could not tell.

Ellen Booraem (YA, she’s great at writing books from a totally different angle), Oyinkan Braithwaite (she’s only written two books so far but they’re great), Katharine Kerr.

Some people are about to lose their marbles but just going by the numbers: J. K. Rowling.

She authored the 4th best selling single book of all time and the best selling book series of all time, by quite the margin.

Tamsyn Muir comes to mind for her excellent locked tomb series

No love for Robin Hobb?

Agatha Christie. While not quite what I like there is no denying her success.

Poets are authors too, so I’m tossing mine in for Emily Dickinson

I’m voting for Julian May (yes, she was female). Her best series of books were the Saga of Pliocene Exile and the Galactic Milieu trilogy (in 4 parts).

Fiction

• Ursula K. LeGuin

• Octavia Butler

• Margaret Atwood

• Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)

• Suzanne Collins (YA)

• Lois Lowry (YA)

Non-Fiction

• Naomi Klein

• Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)

• Angela Y. Davis

• Tanya Talaga

• bell hooks

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

I don’t know about “of all time” but “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett should be required reading.

https://www.lauriegarrett.com/the-coming-plague

Toni Morrison

Angela Carter

Virginia Wolfe

Shirley Jackson

Octavia Butler

Ursula K LeGuin?