Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Katharine Kerr is an American science fiction and fantasy novelist, best known for her series of Celtic-influenced high fantasy novels set in the fictional land of Deverry.
Marge Piercy is an American progressive activist, feminist, and writer. Her work includes Woman on the Edge of Time; He, She and It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best Seller and a sweeping historical novel set during World War II. Piercy's work is rooted in her Jewish heritage, Communist social and political activism, and feminist ideals.
Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. Several of his books have been made into films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. Doyle's work is set primarily in Ireland, especially working-class Dublin, and is notable for its heavy use of dialogue written in slang and Irish English dialect. Doyle was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.
Lan Samantha Chang is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the author of The Family Chao (2022) and short story collection Hunger. For her fiction, which explores Chinese American experiences, she is a recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books. She also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer; a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart; and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.
Urban fiction, also known as street lit or street fiction, is a literary genre set in a city landscape; however, the genre is as much defined by the socio-economic realities and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living. Profanity, sex, and violence are usually explicit, with the writer not shying away from or watering-down the material. Most authors of this genre draw upon their past experiences to depict their storylines.
Stuart Woods was an American novelist, known best for his first novel Chiefs and his series of novels featuring the Stone Barrington character.
Ken Bruen is an Irish writer of hardboiled and noir crime fiction.
Parable of the Sower is a 1993 speculative fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. It is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth heavily affected by climate change and social inequality. The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who can feel the pain of others and becomes displaced from her home. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has discovered and titled Earthseed. The main tenets of Earthseed are that "God is Change" and believers can "shape God" through conscious effort to influence the changes around them. Earthseed also teaches that it is humanity's destiny to inhabit other planets and spread the "seeds" of the Earth.
Stone Butch Blues is an autobiographical novel by Leslie Feinberg. Written from the perspective of stone butch lesbian Jess Goldberg, it intimately details her life in the last half of the 20th century in New York.
Alison Goodman is an Australian writer of books for young adults.
Paula Brooks is a fictional comic book character published by DC Comics. She is one of many characters to use the names Tigress and Huntress. Paula Brooks is married to Sportsmaster and the mother of Artemis Crock.
Paula Gosling is a United States-born crime writer. She has lived in the United Kingdom since the 1960s. In 1957, Gosling graduated from Mackenzie High School in Detroit, Michigan. Following her high school career, she obtained her English degree at Wayne State University, graduating in 1962. Gosling began her writing career as a copy-writer. In 1974, she published her first novel, A Running Duck, which won the John Creasey Award for the best first novel of the year. In 1985, Gosling received the Gold Dagger for her subsequent book, Monkey Puzzle. She is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association.
Paula Sharp is an American author whose fictional works focus on the American family and explore themes of social injustice. Her books include The Woman Who Was Not All There, The Imposter, Lost in Jersey City, Crows over a Wheatfield and I Loved You All. She is also a translator of Latin American fiction, including Antonio Skármeta's La insurrección.
Paula L. Woods is an African-American crime novelist and literary critic. Her 1999 novel, Inner City Blues, won the Macavity Award for best first mystery, and was followed by other novels featuring its heroine, L.A. policewoman Charlotte Justice. She has also edited an anthology of African-American crime literature and co-edited three anthologies of African American literature illustrated with African American fine art.
Desperate Characters is a 1970 novel by Paula Fox.
Come Along with Me is a posthumous collection of works by American writer Shirley Jackson. It contains the incomplete titular novel, on which Jackson was working at the time of her death, three lectures delivered by Jackson, and sixteen short stories, mostly in the gothic genre, including Jackson's best known work, "The Lottery".
Paula Boock is a New Zealand writer and editor.
Maria Hummel is an American writer. Her poetry collection, House and Fire, was winner of the 2013 APR/Hickman First Book Prize. She has written five novels: Goldenseal, Lesson in Red, Still Lives, Motherland and Wilderness Run.
