Great Women Writers

Writers' lives are never easy. Most of these literary pioneers faced rejection and widespread critical and commercial failure before earning their places in America's literary canon. Introduction (PDF 8.9 MB).

 

Fun Quiz

1. Which writer faced decades of rejection and suffered multiple nervous breakdowns before becoming one of America's leading authors, whose books are still being made into films today?

Answer: Edith Wharton, a storyteller since the age of four, initially self-published her work and waited until she was 43 to score her first commercial and critical hit with The House of Mirth, in 1905. Both The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence were made into major release films in the 1990s.

2. Whose work was branded politically incorrect in the 1930s, but is now required reading for American school children?

Answer: Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God was branded a "minstrel show" by Harlem's literary elite. Alice Walker, searching for an authentic black American female voice, rediscovered Hurston in the 1960s. Since heralded as a writer far ahead of her time, the author's the once-controversial novel was made into an award-winning 2005 HBO film starring Halle Berry.

3. Which daughter of the south wrote a story from the point of view of a murderous white racist just after the assassination of a leading black civil rights leader?

Answer: On hearing the news that Medgar Evers had been shot in the back, right where she lived in Jackson Mississippi, Eudora Welty sat down and wrote, Where Is the Voice Coming From? in one sitting. The story appeared in The New Yorker in June 1963. "Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place."