Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd, is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer.
Anna Kavan was a British novelist, short story writer and painter. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939, not only as a pen name but as her legal identity.
Dubravka Ugrešić was a Yugoslav-Croatian and Dutch writer. A graduate of University of Zagreb, she was based in Amsterdam from 1996 and continued to identify as a Yugoslav writer.
Anna Seghers, is the pseudonym of German writer Anna Reiling, who was notable for exploring and depicting the moral experience of the Second World War. Born into a Jewish family and married to a Hungarian Communist, Seghers escaped Nazi-controlled territory through wartime France. She was granted a visa and gained ship's passage to Mexico, where she lived in Mexico City (1941–47).
Eva Maria Charlotte Michelle Ibbotson was an Austrian-born British novelist, known for her children's literature. Some of her novels for adults have been reissued for the young adult market. The historical novel Journey to the River Sea won her the Smarties Prize in category 9–11 years, garnered an unusual commendation as runner-up for the Guardian Prize, and made the Carnegie, Whitbread, and Blue Peter shortlists. She was a finalist for the 2010 Guardian Prize at the time of her death. Her last book, The Abominables, was among four finalists for the same award in 2012.
Ágota Kristóf was a Hungarian writer who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. Kristóf received the "European prize" from ADELF, the association of Francophone authors, for Le Grand Cahier. It was followed by two sequels which are collectively The Notebook Trilogy. She won the 2001 Gottfried Keller Award in Switzerland and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2008.
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is an American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Naylor is best known for her children's-novel quartet Shiloh and for her "Alice" book series, one of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade.
Anna Göldi was an 18th-century Swiss housemaid who was one of the last persons to be executed for witchcraft in Europe. Göldi, who was executed by decapitation in Glarus, has been called the "last witch" in Switzerland. She was posthumously exonerated by the government of the canton of Glarus in 2008.
Magda Szabó was a Hungarian novelist. Doctor of philology, she also wrote dramas, essays, studies, memoirs, poetry and children's literature. She was a founding member of the Digital Literary Academy, an online digital repository of Hungarian literature. She is the most translated Hungarian author, with publications in 42 countries and over 30 languages.
Leonhard Frank was a German expressionist writer. He studied painting and graphic art in Munich, and gained acclaim with his first novel The Robber Band. When a Berlin journalist celebrated in a famous café about news of the loss of the ship RMS Lusitania, torpedoed by a German submarine, Frank was upset – and slapped the man in his face. That is why he went into exile in Switzerland (1915–18), where he wrote a series of pacifist short-stories published under the title Man is Good. He returned to Germany, but after the Nazis gained power in 1933 Frank had to emigrate a second time. He lived in Switzerland again, moved to London, then Paris and finally fled under adventurous conditions to the United States in 1940, returning to Munich in 1950. His best-known novels were In the Last Coach and Carl and Anna, which he dramatized in 1929. In 1947 MGM made a movie titled Desire Me out of this story.
The Swiss Literary Archives in Bern collects literary estates in all four national languages of Switzerland. It is part of the Swiss National Library operated by the Federal Office of Culture within the Federal Department of Home Affairs.
Phạm Thị Hoài is an influential contemporary Vietnamese writer, editor and translator, living in Germany.
Emily Pohl-Weary is a Canadian novelist, poet, university professor, and magazine editor. She is the granddaughter of science fiction writers and editors Judith Merril and Frederik Pohl.
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish writer. She published her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, at the age of 33. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she was the first woman to be granted a membership in the Swedish Academy in 1914.
Anna Fienberg is an Australian writer of young adult fiction and children's literature.
Emilie Kempin-Spyri was the first woman in Switzerland to graduate with a law degree and to be accepted as an academic lecturer. However, as a woman she was not permitted to practice as an attorney. She emigrated to New York where she taught at a law school she established for women. She was the niece of the author Johanna Spyri.
Michelle Herman is an American writer and a Professor of English at Ohio State University. Her most widely known work is the novel Dog, which WorldCat shows in 545 libraries and has been translated into Italian. She has also written the novel Missing, which was awarded the Harold Ribalow Prize for Jewish fiction. She is married to Glen Holland, a still life painter. They have a daughter.
Luise Adelaide Lavinia Schopenhauer, known as Adele Schopenhauer, was a German author. She was the sister of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and daughter of author Johanna Schopenhauer. Henriette Sommer and Adrian van der Venne were pseudonyms used by her.
Anna Goeldin—The Last Witch (1982) is the novel with which Swiss writer Eveline Hasler established her literary reputation. It imagines the life of Anna Göldi. Goeldin was executed by decapitation in 1782 in Glarus, Switzerland and has become known as the last person to be executed for witchcraft in a German-speaking country.
