Writer / Poet

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. She was intellectually precocious, fuelled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!" Studying mathematics and literature/languages at private colleges, she completed her degree in Philosophy at [...]

Ursula K Le Guin

Ursula was born in 1929 in California. Her father was an anthropologist and her mother was a writer. Having earned a Master's degree in French, she began doctoral studies, but abandoned these after her 1953 marriage to historian Charles Le Guin, [...]

Danielle Steel

Danielle Schuelein-Steel was born in New York City in 1947, and spent much of her childhood in France. Danielle started writing stories as a child, and by her late teens had begun writing poetry. From an early age she was included [...]

Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy was born in Dublin in 1939, the oldest of the four children. She went on to study at University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history), worked as a teacher of French, Latin, and history at [...]

Gertrude Stein

Feminist writer, poet, playwright, and art collector, Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania in 1874, the youngest of five children. Gertrude learned several languages before learning English as her family travelled to Europe in the first six years of her life. [...]

Patsy Adam-Smith

Born in 1924, Patricia Smith was adopted by railway workers, her mother a station-mistress and her father a fettler - growing up in a number of small Victorian country towns and educated at small country schools. In conservative 1950s Australia, Patsy [...]

Amy Tan

Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. At age 15, she lost her older brother and father, both to brain tumours within six months of each other. Believing they [...]

Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner was a historian and scholar who pioneered the field of women's history. Born in Vienna, Gerda became involved in the anti-Nazi resistance in 1938. After spending 6 weeks in gaol, Gerda was sponsored to emigrate to the United States. [...]

Isabel Allende

The feminist author is known for the strong portrayals of women she gives in her works. Born into a Chilean family with political ties, she went into exile in the United States in the 1970s – an event that, she believes, [...]

Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Bell was a writer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer who helped establish modern day Jordan and Iraq after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Both the British government and the Arab leaders claimed that she was valuable help thanks to her [...]

Posie Graeme-Evans

Posie Graeme-Evans has worked in Australian film and television for the last 30 years as a director, commissioning executive and creator/producer of hundreds of hours of drama and children’s series, including the worldwide smash hit McLeod’s Daughters and Daytime Emmy nominated [...]

Go to Top