PG CWWN Members Recommend... Short Story Writers

At the end of last year, we asked for recommendations of your favourite contemporary women writers of short-form fiction. This was in response to the reading list compiled to celebrate UK’s National Short Story Week 2012 – and the fact that it featured a mere three women out of its eight recommended authors. To readdress this imbalance, we asked for recommendations from our Facebook and Twitter followers and – hurrah! – they suggested some fantastic writers, as well as specific stories.

Without further ado, here is the full list of contemporary women short story writers, as recommended by the PG CWWN:

• Ali Smith – The First Person and Other Stories
• Lorrie Moore – Birds of America (‘What You Want to Do Fine’)
• Emma Donoghue – Astray (‘Onward’, ‘Daddy’s Girl’)
• Jhumpa Lahiri – The Interpreter of Maladies
• Petina Gappah – An Elegy for Easterly
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – The Thing Around Your Neck
• Nicola Barker – Three Button Trick
• Angela Carter – Burning Your Boats
• Margaret Atwood – Good Bones and Murder in the Dark
• Alice Walker – The Complete Stories
• Daphne du Maurier – The Birds and other stories
• Jackie Kay – Reality, Reality
• Maeve Brennan – The Springs of Affections: Stories of Dublin
• Muriel Spark – ‘The Portobello Road’, ‘The Girl I left Behind Me’ & ‘Bang-Bang You’re Dead’
• Lydia Davis – Story and Other Stories
• Amy Hempel – At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom
• Nuala Ní Chonchúir – Nude
• Amy Bloom – A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories

A huge thank you to everyone who responded to our posts. We shall most definitely be asking for your recommendations of CWW in other genres and forms again.