Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
Grace Paley (1922–2007)
Social activist and writer whose three volumes of short stories were published
together as The Collected Stories (1994).
Sara Paretsky (1947– )
Author of a series of novels featuring the female detective “V. I.” Warshawski,
beginning with Indemnity Only (1982). Hardball was published in 2009.
Marge Piercy (1936– )
Activist, poet, and novelist whose early works are considered feminist classics.
They include the speculative novel Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and the
poetry collection The Moon Is Always Female (1980).
Marilynne Robinson (1947– )
Began writing Housekeeping (1980) while working on her dissertation at the
University of Washington. She did not publish another novel until Gilead
(2004), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award,
and the Ambassador Book Award; in the interim she wrote nonfiction works
including Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution (1989)
and The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998). Home (2008), the
sequel to Gilead, won the Orange Prize for fiction and was a finalist for the
National Book Award.
Joanna Russ (1937– )
Teacher and writer best known for her groundbreaking works of speculative fic-
tion, including The Female Man (1975), We Who Are about to... (1977), The Two
of Them (1978), Kittatinny: A Tale of Magic (1978), On Strike against God (1980),
and Extra (Ordinary) People (1984).
Esmeralda Santiago (1948– )
Puerto Rico–born author of the memoirs When I Was Puerto Rican (1994), Almost
a Woman (1999), and The Turkish Lover (2004) and the novel América’s Dream
(1997).
Alice Sebold (1963– )
Author of the novels The Lovely Bones (2002) and The Almost Moon (2007). Lucky
(1999) is a memoir describing her survival after being raped as a college freshman.
Ntozake Shange (1948– )
African American playwright, poet, novelist, children’s writer, and feminist.
Her plays are for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
(1976), A Photograph: A Study of Cruelty (1977), Spell #7 (1979), The Love Space
Demands (1992), and Hydraulics Phat Like Mean (1998).
Alix Kates Shulman (1932– )
Activist and author of novels, memoirs, books for children, two books on the anar-
chist Emma Goldman, and many short stories and essays. The Oxford Companion
to Women’s Writing in the United States (1995) calls her Memoirs of an Ex-Prom
Queen (1972) “the first important novel to emerge from the Women’s Liberation
Movement.” Her other most notable publications are the memoirs Drinking the