Blánaid Salkeld was an Irish poet, dramatist, actor, and publisher, whose well-known literary salon was attended by, among others, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Ithell Colquhoun was a British painter, occultist, poet and author. Stylistically her artwork was affiliated with surrealism. In the late 1930s, Colquhoun was part of the British Surrealist Group before being expelled because she refused to renounce her association with occult groups.
Mary Dorcey is an Irish author and poet, feminist, and LGBT+ activist. Her work is known for centering feminist and queer themes, specifically lesbian love and lesbian eroticism.
Rosemary Tonks was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye following her conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.
Patricia Monaghan was a poet, a writer, a spiritual activist, and an influential figure in the contemporary women's spirituality movement. Monaghan wrote over 20 books on a range of topics including Goddess spirituality, earth spirituality, Celtic mythology, the landscape of Ireland, and techniques of meditation. In 1979, she published the first encyclopedia of female divinities, a book which has remained steadily in print since then and was republished in 2009 in a two volume set as The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines. She was a mentor to many scholars and writers including biologist Cristina Eisenberg, poet Annie Finch, theologian Charlene Spretnak, and anthropologist Dawn Work-MaKinne, and was the founding member of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, which brought together artists, scholars, and researchers of women-centered mythology and Goddess spirituality for the first time in a national academic organization.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Eunice de Souza was an Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Among her notable books of poetry are Women in Dutch painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), Nine Indian Women Poets (1997), These My Words (2012), and Learn From The Almond Leaf (2016). She published two novels, Dangerlok (2001), and Dev & SImran (2003), and was also the editor of a number of anthologies on poetry, folktales, and literary criticism.
The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award is an Irish poetry award for a collection of poems by an author who has not previously been published in collected form. It is confined to poets born on the island of Ireland, or who have Irish nationality, or are long-term residents of Ireland. It is based on an open competition whose closing date is in July each year. The award was founded by the Patrick Kavanagh Society in 1971 to commemorate the poet.
Colleen J. McElroy was an American poet, short story writer, editor, memoirist.
Brenda Marie Osbey is an American poet. She served as the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2005 to 2007.
Finola Moorhead is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and reviewer. Her topics include women and writing, switching between reality and fiction, with themes of subversion and survival. Moorhead participates in the women's liberation movement, and during the 1980s, she was a radical feminist. As a result of a challenge she wrote a book without male characters.
Anne Fuller was an Irish novelist in the Gothic genre. She was one of the earliest women writers of Gothic fiction.
Eithne Strong was a bilingual Irish poet and writer who wrote in both Irish and English. Her first poems in Irish were published in Combhar and An Glor 1943–44 under the name Eithne Ni Chonaill. She was a founder member of the Runa Press whose early Chapbooks featured artwork by among others Jack B. Yeats, Sean Keating, Sean O'Sullivan, Harry Kernoff among others. The press was noted for the publication in 1943 of Marrowbone Lane by Robert Collis which depicts the fierce fighting that took place during the Easter Rising of 1916.
Máighréad Medbh is an Irish writer and poet.
Lucille Lang Day is an American poet, writer, and science and health educator. Day has authored or edited 20 books and is a contributor to over 50 anthologies. She is best known as a poet and writer for her award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, for her integration of science imagery and concepts into poetry and for advocating use of poetry as a tool in environmental activism. As a science and health educator, her many achievements have included promoting science education for girls and serving as codirector of Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community, a project that was funded by the National Institutes of Health and aimed to make biomedical science more accessible to underrepresented minorities.
Dolores Walshe, is an Irish short story writer, novelist and playwright.
Mary O'Brien, was an Irish poet and playwright who wrote during and about the Regency period.
Máire Bradshaw, is a writer, poet and publisher. Bradshaw was born in Limerick in 1943. She was educated in Laurel Hill convent before moving to Cork. There she got involved with the feminist movement. Bradshaw runs Bradshaw Books founded in 1985 as the Cork Women's Poetry Circle. She has published Theo Dorgan and Dympna Dreyer amongst others. Bradshaw is a poet and was commissioned in 1991 to write the poem to celebrate the freedom of the city of Cork given to Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland as well as reading the presidential poem during her inauguration. Her work is also in a number of anthologies as well as collections of her own work. Bradshaw is also the director of Tig Fili, an organisation designed to provide workshops in art and poetry.