A Spoopy Love Affair With Books

1. Favorite female author? (Or authors, I know it can be hard to choose only one!) How about five?

• The Brontes
• Tamora Pierce
• Cherie Priest
• Liz Jensen
• Shirley Jackson

2. Favorite book by a female writer?

• Novel: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
• Classic: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Series: The Tortall books by Tamora Pierce
• Comic: Witchblade, Christina Z.'s run, even though they like to pretend now that Marc Silvestri wrote those issues and not her, it's bullshit. That's the mass market stuff. For graphic novel either Emily Carroll's Through the Woods or Vera Brosgol's Anya's Ghost.

3. Favorite quote by a female writer?

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

4. Favorite fictional heroine?

Jane Eyre. I was thinking of how to explain or justify this, and then I realized I didn't have to. Though it's worth noting that a female character written more than a century and a half ago manages to have a stronger, more complex and more interesting inner life than a lot of the characters do today

5. Favorite female poet?

Anne Sexton. Transformations is not only my favorite book of poetry, it's one of my favorite books of all time.

6. Favorite female author of your childhood?

I liked Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern and Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books. Sadly, I've recently revisited McCaffrey's The Rowan and found it shockingly misogynistic, so... I don't necessarily think that invalidates my liking her, but it puts it into a new light. I hope to reread some of the Pern books in hopes of discovering that they're not that bad and I was just either accepting it or ignoring it.

Those were sort of in my tween years. I didn't read a lot younger than that, not by myself; I actually struggled with it. My parents read me the Nancy Drew books, so I suppose Carolyn Keene counts! Hey, it might have been a pseudonym, but it was for a few other women, so... yeah, it counts. 

7. Favorite living female writer?

Tamora Pierce. I would have loved to have found her books when I was younger, but even as YA, they remain my favorite high fantasies, aside from the great Tolkien.

8. Do you have a not very known favorite female author? Share her with us!

JOAN D. VINGE! She needs so much more attention than she gets. The Snow Queen should really be as famous as Dune and its other contemporaries.

I wish I could get more people to read Liz Jensen, too. She's often put in horror, or literary horror, but she rather defies genre, in my opinion. she's character driven.

9. Bonus: Which female author would you have loved to meet? What one question would you have asked her? 

Toni Morrison! Oh my God, who wouldn't want to meet Toni Morrison?! What one question? Ha! I'd want to talk with her for hours, about everything!