Ursula K LeGuin?
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Obviously, Mary Shelley. Created the most famous character of all time and the entire genre of science fiction while still a teenager.
I'm a fan of Tanith Lee. She started weird fantasy and Neil Gaiman stole all his best ideas and most of his writing style from her.
Karen Slaughter writes detective novels that make Jack Reacher look like a school boy.
Tana French is Slaughter's Irsih cousin.
Joanna Russ was an out Lesbian back in the 1970s. "The Female Man" is still cutting edge.
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Fiction
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Ursula K. LeGuin
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Octavia Butler
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Margaret Atwood
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Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)
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Suzanne Collins (YA)
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Lois Lowry (YA)
Non-Fiction
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Naomi Klein
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Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)
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Angela Y. Davis
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Tanya Talaga
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bell hooks
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Robin Wall Kimmerer
Ursula LeGuin
Margaret Atwood
Diana Wynne Jones
and for personal preference, Robin McKinley
No love for Jane Austen? Some of her works are all time classic. They could probably compete with top 10 literature work of 17th-18th century.
Another author that's under appreciated would be Gertrude Stein.
Yeah, Jane Austen's easily one of the top 20 English novelists of all time, and one of my personal favorites. She gets kind of a mixed appreciation these days bc the movies made from her novels usually focus on the romance (often in a way that would have scandalized her) and skimp on her commentary about human nature and society's pressures. And plus her prose is just gorgeous and that is difficult to adapt to film. Probably the best adaptation is the BBC 1980 Pride and Prejudice miniseries ( wikipedia , tubi ) which was adapted by Fay Weldon, who was a novelist in her own right. That miniseries turns a lot of Austen's prose into dialogue, which is beautiful to hear in that context, though as a consequence the series is a little slow for a wide modern audience. Really you have to read the books themselves.
She's also incredibly funny (and sometimes savage) which also gets lost in many adaptations, since it's in her commentary and not necessarily in the dialog.
She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas.
The only female author I am familiar enough with to have an opinion on is Anne McCaffrey because of the Dragon Riders of Pern series. Those are in my top 5 all time favorite series', tho. Above Goosebumps but below Neuromancer, LOTR, and Wheel of Time.
I need to get around to trying the Pern books. My mom was a big fan and had all or nearly all of them.
That's how I got into them, too! My mom had the entire series lol
Her other series are great. Tower and the Hive, Acorna, and the Tales of the Barque Cats. One of my favorite authors.
Incorrect answer but I'm very excited every time she has a book, Mary Roach.
I met her in person! She's super funny!!
Lucky you! I am 0% surprised she's funny, that combination of smarts n funny is what makes her writing so goddamned good.
Mary Shelley has to be up there for inventing Sci-Fi.
Some would say that was Margaret Cavendish, 150 years earlier. Mary Shelly’s novels are and have been more popular though.
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Agatha Christie is definitely one. Agree with Mary Shelley Robin Hobb
Love N.K. Jemisin's books
I saw her give a talk once. Someone asked her about the environment or climate change, and she said something like "There's like 100 people responsible for most of the problem, and we know where they live."
The crowd loved this answer. The guy moderating the event made nervous noises.
Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis was intense but beautifully conveyed, full agree.
Le Guin
Agree with all of the above, would add T. Kingfisher for fantasy, Iris Murdoch for heady philosophical fiction, Agatha Christie for murder mystery, Clarissa Pinkola Estés for empowering fables and explorations of feminine archetypes, Mary Oliver for poetry, and Lady Margaret Cavendish for a great sci-fi novel from 1666.
I don't have 'best female author of all time' but I do have favorite writers some of which happen to be female. I don't usually split them by their sex (nor by their height, distaste for bananas, or whatever) as for me they're all in the same 'people who have a great time staining paper with ink making me a happy reader' league but here it is, in absolutely no order beside the first two, as there is them and then there is all the others:
- Virginia Woolf (the only reason I would love to be able to travel in time is to meet her),
- Jane Austen,
- Edit: (how could I forget) Emily Dickinson!
- Sylvia Plath,
- Shirley Jackson (if you have not already, go read The Haunting of Hill House, it's considered a classic for reasons),
- la marquise de Sévigné (she wrote letters and they make for a great read, no idea if it's available in English),
- Margaret Atwood (imho she deserves a Nobel Prize, next to Woolf and Austen),
- Mary Shelley (like mentioned by others already, she well deserves to be read and would still have a lot to teach to some contemporary authors too, imho).
- I love reading Lizza Tuttle. Her horror short stories are different.
- In the same vein, I also quite like Mélanie Fazzi (who is also a translator of some of Tuttle's stories, btw). But I can't find that much more female writers in that specific genre (a lot more males do come to my mind).
Being French, I realize I have not listed that many French female writers I would consider a favorite. But they are a few I would consider excellent read nonetheless:
- La comtesse de Ségur (one of my childhood companion next to, say, Verne and Doyle),
- Simone de Beauvoir,
- (very) few pages of Marguerite Duras,
- Fred Vargas.
- To which I would also add Pauline Réage, because I think her 'Histoire d'O' is well worth reading for anyone into erotica.
- At one time, I also quite liked Joëlle Wintrebert (scifi) but I have not felt like reading her for a very long time so I could not tell.
Astrid Lindgren, her books are translated to 95 different languages and sold over 160 million copies. Probably the worlds most beloved children’s book author.
A lot of folk are giving great answers here.
I just want to add Andre Norton to the list. She was a pioneer in Sci-Fi and her fantasy work was great too.
If you like Star Trek:
DC Fontana
Toni Morrison
Angela Carter
Virginia Wolfe
Shirley Jackson
Octavia Butler
Mary Ann Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. Middlemarch is imho one of the best novels ever written in the English language.
Agatha Christie. While not quite what I like there is no denying her success.
Ursula le Guin is a great SF writer
I'm disappointed that no one has mentioned Lois McMaster Bujold yet.
I don't know about "of all time" but "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett should be required reading.
Poets are authors too, so I'm tossing mine in for Emily Dickinson
Ann Leckie and Becky Chambers are definitely up there
Tamsyn Muir comes to mind for her excellent locked tomb series
This has been living rent-free in my head since I started reading it a month ago, and now I'm rereading it already.
Some people are about to lose their marbles but just going by the numbers: J. K. Rowling.
She authored the 4th best selling single book of all time and the best selling book series of all time, by quite the margin.
I'd say that would be considered "most successful"
"Best" is very subjective
Sure, but when you asking about a specific profession, that seems the most obvious way to interpret that question.
Unless OP just wants to find a nice female author to hang out with (in that case we should probably exclude all the dead ones).
Could also just be to start a discussion or find new authors to check out
Financial success is a poor measure for the worth of artists of any stripe. If anything, it has an inverse relationship.
Pretty sure a lot of artists that are just scratching by would disagree, but fair enough.
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Henriette Walter. Her works on French linguistics are both fascinating and informative.
Iris Murdoch. I've only read The Sea, The Sea, but it's one of the books that got me into literature when I was a teenager. I really need to get around to exploring more of her work.
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