Claribel Alegría
Claribel Alegría was a poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who was a major literary voice in 20th century Central America. She won the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, among other awards.
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Erinna
Erinna was an ancient Greek poet, who was in her time considered one of the great women poets, second only to Sappho.
Hồ Xuân Hương
Hồ Xuân Hương was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê dynasty (1428 to 1789). She wrote poetry using chữ nôm (Southern Script), which adapts Chinese characters to write demotic Vietnamese. She is considered one of Vietnam’s greatest classical poets.
Salomé Ureña
Dominican poet Salomé Ureña was an early advocate for women’s higher education in the Dominican Republic.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Though she is little known, Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven helped to shape the direction of New York Dada with her eccentric public displays and performances as well as with her desire to fuse her sexuality with her art. In the face of accusations that she was “crazy,” Freytag-Loringhoven would simply state, “Every artist is crazy with respect to ordinary life.” Her gender bending and blatant displays of her sexuality anticipated Feminist art and performance of the mid-20th century. She was an innovative artist whose works paved the way for later experimental Performance art of the late 1950s and 1960s. A renowned poet and a proto-feminist, Elsa and her work have only recently been rediscovered by art historians who have recognized the importance of her contribution to New York Dada. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. At the very forefront of developing the readymade and performance art, the Baroness holds a legacy as the “Mama of Dada,” as the New York Times critic Holland Cotter dubbed her.
Anne Wilson
She chose ‘Austral’ as her first literary pseudonym, but later wrote under the name of Mrs Glenny Wilson.
Between 1875 and 1880 she had five children and began publishing sketches, verses and short stories. These appeared in the Australasian and in English and American journals, including Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Temple Bar and the Spectator. Her work attracted sufficient interest to warrant the publication in London in 1889 of a collection of poetry, Themes and variations. This was favourably reviewed in Britain and was reprinted in 1895 in an enlarged edition. A second collection, A book of verses, was published in 1901 and reprinted in 1917. She was particularly pleased when two of her poems, ‘Fairyland’ and ‘A spring afternoon in New Zealand’, appeared in a children’s reading series produced by the New Zealand government. Although a number of critics noted an uneven quality in her later poetry, a survey of early New Zealand women writers, published in 1909, praised her subject matter and style: ‘She sings of love and home and motherhood, and paints the Maori landscape with grace and power’.
Averil Margaret Lysaght
From an early age she developed an interest in natural history. At 15 she discovered a new species of a noctuid moth on Mt Egmont, which was described in 1921 by the entomologist G. V. Hudson as Melanchra averilla in her honour. In 1923 Lysaght commenced studies at Victoria University College, Wellington. She graduated BSc in 1928 and MSc in 1929 with second-class honours in zoology; her thesis in entomology was on the biology of Eucolaspis.
Aziza Abdel-Halim
The founder and president of the Muslim Women’s National Network, she has become a leading spokesperson for her community, and in 2004 served on Prime Minister Howard’s Muslim Community Reference Group.
Anacaona
Anacaona was a Taíno cacica, (female cacique or chief), religious expert, poet and composer of Xaraguá, in what is now Haiti.
Devorah Baron
Devorah Baron was a Jewish writer known for writing in Modern Hebrew and making a career as a Hebrew author. She has been called the “first Modern Hebrew woman writer”. She wrote about 80 short stories, as well as a novella, and translated stories into Modern Hebrew.