Check It Out: Women Writers
In anticipation of Read Street Books' upcoming Women's LitFest, I asked owner Christina Bittner to list her own favorite women writers, and she obliged with an all-encompassing group of reads.
"For fiction," Bittner says, "Laura Lippman is at the top of the list." However, her choices in nonfiction reflects a penchant for the facts.
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s work has a special place in Bittner's life and list, including Wait Till Next Year, which she calls a must-read for baseball lovers, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.
"My 'political awareness' developed while watching news reports of civil rights marches in the South and following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy," Bittner explains. "Learning more about the Johnson presidency and his work in Congress helps to make my knowledge of the era more complete."
Newspaper columnist and Who Let the Dogs In author Molly Ivins is also high on her list. "I’m sure that her wit is charming the heavens, and she is looking down urging us to get involved and raise more hell."
Rounding out her female favorites are Jane Addam’s Twenty Years at Hull House, Nelly Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse and Barbara Jordan’s Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder.
Happily for me, it looks like my pile of books to read is only getting larger.
