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.
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