Hello everyone!

Bookish Bloggers Unite was formed when a group of like-minded writers decided they want to talk about books together.

I’m lucky enough to be hosting this week’s tag which is Favourite Women Writers Across Multiple Genres. Pick your favourite genres and tell us about your favourite female authors writing within them (or around them or across them!) Anyone can play – just pop your link in the linky at the end.

The way I’m going to define a “favourite” is someone whose entire offerings I have read or plan to read. Also, everyone on this list I have read multiple works from. Hence there are notable people missing such as Melissa Lucashenko, Nikki Drayden and Martha Wells.

Let’s go!

Science Fiction

I first read Pat Cadigan’s Fools before the Pentium was invented. It was published in the very early 90s, when the best internet search engine was Ask Jeeves, you could only participate in the internet if you could code and Windows hadn’t been invented yet. Cadigan’s world building is inventive and detailed while still being gritty and realistic. I particularly love the way that the story of Fools is told with multiple narrative voices identified by different fonts. It’s a wild ride that I have taken many times.

Honourable mentions to:

Amie Kaufman (Most of her work that I have read has been written on conjunction with others, but I’ve seen her talk a couple of times and I think she’s pretty awesome.)

Kameron Hurley (The Stars are Legion is nothing like anything I have ever read and I need to visit more of her back catalogue.)

Becky Chambers (I love the Wayfarer books so much!)

Fantasy

I encountered N.K Jemisin’s work for the first time last year when I picked up The Fifth Season. The last thing I read with a second person narrative would have been the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were popular when I was a kid. The amazing world building and the intensity of the story absolutely sucked me in. Jemisin doesn’t pull her punches and I loved how fearless the story was in it’s explorations of love, loss and ideas about community, family and servitude. That series broke my heart!

Honourable mentions to

Nnedi Okorafor (I love the Binti books!)

Literary Fiction

Sorry but I’m playing a “Team Old” card for this one. I ran across Simone de Beauvoir when I was studying philosophy (after the Pentium was invented, but not by much) and I’ve read everything of hers I could get my hands on. My favourite of her novels is All Men are Mortal, where the main character, a young, image obsessed actress meets a man who is immortal. Listening to his stories about people he has loved in the past but lost, as well as his frank admissions about the fact that he won’t remember her in 100 years shake her to her core. It’s an interesting discussion about life and death and where we place our interests while we are alive.

Honourable mention:

Virginia Woolf (Another Team Old pick. The Waves and Orlando both have my heart.)

Mystery/Thriller

I don’t tend to read a lot of these although it was one of my favourite genres when I was young. But – Emma Viskic come on down. Resurrection Bay and And Fire Came Down are such great books. Her casting is diverse, the pacing is great and I’m thoroughly invested in Caleb Zelic. I’m ready for the next one Emma! Whenever you are, no rush. (This year? Please?)

Young Adult

This is a tough one. Who do I choose?

April Daniels for her superhero stories about Danny, who knows she is a girl on the inside although everyone thinks she is a boy, and how she is suddenly born into her ideal body when the local hero Dreadnought dies and gives her his powers?

Leigh Bardugo? I loved her The Six of Crows and Wonderwoman. Crows was so gritty and wonderful with great interweaving storylines and I really enjoyed the humour of Wonderwoman.

E.K. Johnston? Exit, Pursued by a Bear was both difficult and wonderful, and I recently fell in love with her latest, wonderful and very pretty That Inevitable Victorian Thing, which reimagines English colonisation as the English mingling with the societies and people they overthrew rather than wiping them out.

So that’s my list. What do you think? I’m sure I’ve missed your faves, so tell me who they are! Remember to add your link below if you are playing along! (Edited to add -Team Old has no idea how to put the linky thing in – I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out!)

Cheers!