The Amazing Nellie Bly, Adventurer and Pioneering Journalist
She went undercover to expose abuse and used bold reporting to demand change, challenging the belief that women journalists belonged only on society pages.
Women worth knowing
All Stories
Extraordinary women, overlooked stories, and a more complete history. Explore the lives, ideas, and achievements that changed the world.
Women Writers
Women who shaped stories, shared knowledge, and challenged ideas.
Explore women writers in history through their poetry, fiction, journalism, memoir, and nonfiction. Discover the writing they created, the lives behind it, and the barriers they faced in getting their words read and their ideas heard.
Grace Dalrymple Elliott, Courtesan and Spy
She risked her life to help others during a revolution, leaving a memoir that preserves a woman’s perspective on political upheaval and the struggle to survive it.
Mary Treat, Victorian Entomologist and Visionary Biologist
Her meticulous observations earned the respect of leading scientists and challenged established ideas, demonstrating how much careful study of the natural world could uncover.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Feminist Writer, Lecturer, and Thinker
Her fiction and arguments for economic independence challenged restrictive ideas about women’s lives, helping readers imagine alternatives to the roles society expected them to accept.
Melanie Klein, the Founding Mother of Children’s Psychology
She took children’s inner lives seriously, developing theories that challenged her peers and helped reshape psychoanalysis despite her unconventional path into the profession.
Daphne du Maurier, English writer
Her fiction turned familiar landscapes into settings for unforgettable suspense, inspiring classic films and unsettling readers with stories that went well beyond conventional romance.
Henrietta Dugdale, Australian women’s rights and suffrage pioneer
Her writing and organizing helped build a women’s suffrage movement, turning anger at inequality into sustained pressure for the right to participate in politics.
Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona, Hawaiian healer
She adapted a spiritual tradition centered on reconciliation and shared it internationally, building a following around forgiveness, personal reflection, and the repair of relationships.
Huda Shaarawi, Egyptian feminist & activist
She brought women into public life through education, organizing, and demands for political rights, helping turn restrictions on their independence into a cause for reform.
Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., America’s first female doctor
She earned a medical degree when the profession excluded women, then helped build hospitals and schools that made it possible for others to follow.
Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist & revolutionary martyr
She used poetry, journalism, and revolutionary organizing to demand education and freedom for women, risking her life to challenge the political and social order.
Indra Devi, Mother of Western Yoga
She pushed into a yoga tradition dominated by men, then carried its practice across continents, helping new audiences find a place in an ancient discipline.
Gay Allis Rose Clifford, poet & scholar
Her study of allegory influenced literary scholarship, while her poetry turned a deep love of language into work that reached readers beyond academia.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, self-taught scholar and poet of New Spain
When religious authorities challenged her intellectual pursuits, she answered with a bold defense of women’s education, turning personal criticism into an enduring argument for equality.
Nana Asma’u: princess, poet, reformer of Muslim women’s education
She turned poetry into a powerful tool for women’s education, training traveling teachers who carried knowledge into communities and helped other women become educators.
Enheduanna, ancient high priestess
Her ancient hymns survived through generations of copying, preserving a woman’s literary voice and offering a rare window into the beginnings of written authorship.
Lady Anne Clifford, patron of the arts
She fought for an inheritance others expected her to surrender, then used her wealth to restore historic buildings and support writers and the arts.