I recently read an article lamenting the absence of female authors on reading lists. The woman who wrote the article cited two lists by prominent men of our day (I won’t say who), but these men had not included any women authors on their suggested reading lists. That prompted me to think about my own list of female authors, and there are many.

Here’s my list. I am sure I have made some embarrassing omissions.

• Rachel Carson
• Daphne du Maurier
• Susan Sontag
• J. K. Rowling
• Harper Lee
• Amy Tan
• Toni Morrison
• Ursula LeGuin
• George Elliott
• Isabel Allende
• Agatha Christi
• Jane Austen
• Pearl S. Buck
• Virginia Woolf
• Elizabeth Gilbert
• Cheryl Strayed
• Louise Erdrich
• Kathleen Alcala
• Doris Lessing
• Ahunrati Roy
• Emily Bronte
• Joan Didion
• Flannery O’Connor
• Charlotte Bronte
• Octavia E Butler
• Jhumpa Lahiri
• Margaret Atwood
• Edith Wharton
• Iris Murdoch
• Nichole Krauss
• Nein Cheng
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Barbara Tuckman
• Barbara Kinsolver
• Ayn Rand
• Christina Rosetti
• Donna Tartt
• Chimamanda Adichie
• Eleanor Catton
• Edwidge Danticat
• Emma Donoghue
• Sheila Heti
• A M Holmes
• Gillian Flynn
• Elliott Holt
• Rachel Kushner
• Claire Messud
• Margaret Wrinkle
• Lorrie Moore
• Zadie Smith
• Alice Munroe
• Karen Russell
• Taiye Selasi
• Jeanette Walls
• Maya Angelou
• Louisa May Alcott
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Sara Gruen
• Veronica Roth