Writer Archives - Page 134 of 138

Teresa Villarreal

Teresa Villarreal González was a feminist, labor organizer, and political activist who supported the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and the Mexican Revolution (1910–17). She and her sister Andrea published the feminist newspaper La Mujer Moderna (The Modern Woman) in 1910. That year, Teresa also established El Obrero: Periódico Independiente (The Worker: Liberal Newspaper) in San Antonio, Texas, and published articles that addressed issues of the working class and called for mass involvement in Mexican Revolution’s struggle for a democratic government. Along with economic, educational, and cultural improvements for the masses, she advocated for the emancipation of women.

Zlata Filipović

From 1991 to 1993, Zlata Filipović wrote in her diary, Mimmy, about the horrors of living through the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War as a child. Later published as “Zlata’s Diary,” the book became a bestseller and elicited comparisons to the diary of Anne Frank.
Filipović and her family survived, escaping to Paris in 1993 with the help of the United Nations. She has lived in Dublin, Ireland since October 1995, where she has continued to write and work on films and as an international activist. In 2011, Filipović produced the short film Stand Up! for BeLonG To, an LGBTQ youth service organisation in Ireland. The film, advocating against homophobic bullying in schools, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube.
Filipović served on the Executive Committee of Amnesty International Ireland from 2007 to 2013 and is a founding member of NYPAW (Network of Young People Affected by War). She has spoken at schools and universities around the world on the topic of children in conflict.

Angélique de Coudray

In 1759, French king Louis XV launched a project to reduce infant mortality in the country and commissioned Parisian midwife Angélique du Coudray to train peasant women as midwifes. From 1760 to 1783, she trained approximately 10,000 women across France, visiting poor women in rural areas and sharing her extensive knowledge with them. Presumably the women she taught also passed those skills on to outhers in following years. Du Coudray also invented the first lifesize obstetrical mannequin, so the women could practice mock births, and published a popular midwifery textbook, Abrégé de l’art des accouchements (The Art of Obstetrics, 1759). Due to the lack of accurate data collection, it is impossible to quote statistics about infant mortality rates (which were frequently underreported in the 1700s and earlier), but it seems inarguable that du Coudray must have directly and indirectly saved countless lives, of both mothers and children.

Sediqeh Dowlatabadi

Feminist activist and journalist Sediqeh Dowlatabadi was a pioneering figures in the Persian women’s movement who believed in the advancement of women through education.

Anna Sewell

Anna Sewell was an English novelist who wrote the 1877 novel Black Beauty, her only published work, which is now considered one of the top ten best selling novels for children, although it was originally intended for an adult audience. She died just five months after Black Beauty’s publication, having lived long enough to see her only novel become a success.

Sophia Frances Anne Caulfeild

Sophia Frances Anne Caulfeild was a British writer and needleworker who wrote about religion and needlework, and frequently worked with Blanche Catherine Saward.
In 1882 she and Blanche Saward had their Dictionary of Needlework published. The work was available in six volumes and its full title was The dictionary of needlework : an encyclopaedia of artistic, plain, and fancy needlework dealing fully with the details of all the stitches employed, the method of working, the materials used, the meaning of technical terms, and, where necessary, tracing the origin and history of the various works described. Their encyclopedia attempted to describe all aspects of needlework, with 800 woodcut illustrations and more than 528 pages of alphabetical entries. The section on embroidery alone was 24 pages long. This work was aimed at the fashion for needlework and it competed with Thérèse de Dillmont’s Complete Encyclopedia of Needlework published in 1884 and Weldon’s Practical Needlework which was published in monthly parts from 1886.
Caulfeild also had a book of poetry published in 1870, and in 1887 published The Lives of the Apostles, their contemporaries and successors.

Sheema Kalbasi

Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian American poet, writer, filmmaker and activist for women’s rights, minorities’ rights, children’s rights, human rights and refugees’ rights. Her work discusses these topics as well as other women’s issues, war, refugees, Sharia Law and freedom of expression. In additon to her artistic work, Sheema taught refugee children and worked for the UNHCR and the Center for Refugees in Pakistan, and UNA Denmark. Her poems have been anthologized and translated into more than 20 languages.

Élisabeth Sophie Chéron

Although Élisabeth-Sophie Chéron is best remembered today as a painter, she was actually a true Renaissance woman, acclaimed during her lifetime as a talented poet, musician, artist, and academicienne. In her childhood, she was trained by her father in the arts of enamelling and miniature painting. Under the sponsorship of the prominent artist Charles Le Brun, she was admitted to the Académie Royale of Paris as a portrait painter in 1672. She exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris, while also producing poetry and translations; she was fluent in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Chéron’s literary talent was recognized in 1694 when she was named a member of Italy’s Accademia dei Ricovrati in Padua, and given the academician name of Erato, after the muse of lyric and love poetry.

Ofelia Domínguez Navarro

Ofelia Domínguez Navarro was a Cuban writer, teacher, lawyer, feminist and activist who fought for the rights of women and illegitimate children.

Una Vincenzo

Perhaps best known as the the long-time lesbian partner of Marguerite Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, sculptor and translator Una Troubridge was an educated woman with achievements in her own right.