Born to an affluent family near Pearlington, Mississippi, Eliza Jane Poitevent developed her passion for reading from magazines. She started writing and publishing poetry about nature and love under the pen name Pearl Rivers, a tribute to the river which flows not far from where she grew up. Poitevent moved to New Orleans and before the age of 30 became the literary editor of the Picayune newspaper. Soon after, she married the newspaper’s owner Alva Holbrook, who was 29 years her senior. Four years after their marriage, Holbrook died, and Eliza Jane inherited the paper, with its debts. She took on the challenge, made editorial changes, adding book reviews, gossip column, and a serial novel. She also promoted female journalists and ensured they get equal pay. In addition to serving as the owner and publisher, she continued writing essays and poetry. She then married the newspaper’s business manager, George Nicholson, 23 years her senior. Together they turned Picayune into the most popular newspaper in the region. She died at the age of 52 from flu, 11 days after her husband. She was survived by two sons and over 200 poems. In 2018, the Eliza Jane Hotel opened in New Orleans, paying homage to the 20 year career of the country’s first female publisher of a major metropolitan newspaper. Read more...

Edna St. Vincent Millay and her sisters were raised by a single mother after she divorced their father – an exceptional move at the time. Their family was economically poor, but did promote exposure to culture and encourage reading. Thanks to the upbringing of her mother, she has developed her talent for poetry at an early age. As a teenager, she published her poems in a children’s magazine and received wide attention when participating in a poetry competition. She recited the same poem in a local inn – describing a spiritual awakening – when she was spotted by a woman who decided to help her fund higher education. The year of her graduation from Vassar College she published her first book of poetry. Millay relocated to Greenwich Village, New York, where her life was, in her own words “very, very poor and very, very merry”. She struggled to make money from poetry and started performing in plays and writing the more popular form of short stories under the pen name Nancy Boyd, also traveling to Paris as Vanity Fair first foreign correspondent. Her exceptional and highly acclaimed professional skill of weaving words was simultaneous with her lifestyle as an openly bisexual liberated woman, her addictions to substances, and her politics of nonconformity. By living her life unapologetically, and writing about what was then controversial, she helped design a “new kind of female experience and expression”. After declining several marriage proposals, she married Eugen Boissevain, who supported her career. The two had no children, and spend their last 25 years at the Steepletop farm that is now a museum for her legacy. Read more...

The award-winning novelist published her first book when she was almost 40 years old. Her works revolve around the history of slavery and contemporary African-American experience.   Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, she lived in six different homes during her childhood. She wanted to be a dancer, but as a teenager worked as a domestic. Morrison graduated from Howard University with a BA in English and later received a Master’s Degree from Cornell University. She was married for six years to architect Harold Morrison and had two sons, one of them died of cancer when he was in his forties. After the divorce, she managed a job as an editor in a publishing house, lecturing and being a single mother. She started working on her first novel in her late thirties, waking up at 4 AM to write before going to her day job.   Her first novel ‘The Bluest Eye’ was published in 1970, her second novel ‘Sula’ won thr Ohioana Book Award, and her third book ‘Song of Solomon’ won several prizes. Her greatest fame came with 1987 novel ‘Beloved’ which is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery and killed her child to remain in freedom. The book received the Pulitzer Prize, was adapted into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey, and an opera.   Morrison went on to publish more than ten novels, write plays, co-author children’s books with her son, lecture, and curate an exhibition on migration at the Louvre Museum in Paris. In 1993 she became the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Read more...

Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, she moved several times in her childhood. Her most influential time was in Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmother, whom she thought was the god but kept it as a secret. The death of the grandmother gave her the courage to live life to the fullest. She gave birth to her only son as she finished high school at 17, and raised him alone, while working in a range of jobs, as a dancer in night clubs and a cook. Attracted by the uniforms, she overcame racial barriers, and in 1944 became the first black female cable car conductor of San Francisco. Angelou has developed a dynamic career as a singer, dancer (even trained with Martha Graham) and actress, touring Europe at the age of 27, editing a magazine in Egypt at 33, and teaching in Ghana at 35. It is only at 40 that she wrote her first book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” that included the description of being raped in childhood. The book became both popular and controversial, selling more than a million copies and translated into 17 languages. It was followed by more than 30 books, including six more volumes of her autobiography, poetry, cookbooks, and children’s books. She continued her diverse career as an actor, director, educator, and essayist, and also became a dominant political voice for the civil rights movement, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In her lifetime she was awarded more than 50 honorary degrees. Read more...

When Gwendolyn Elizabeth wrote an assignment in school, her teacher thought it was too good to be true and accused the young learner of stealing the piece of writing. Her parents encouraged her to pursue her talent, and she would be excused from washing the dishes if she was busy writing. Her first poem was published at the age of 13. She later published more than 20 books of poetry and non-fiction, a novel, children’s books, and two autobiographies. Her writing reflects on black consciousness – strengthened by attending black writers conference at Fisk University in 1967, with special interest in the everyday life of her urban community. She received 50 honorary degrees and made several “firsts”: when she was 33 years old, her second book won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; She was a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, the first black woman to hold that position; And a poet laureate of the State of Illinois. Since moving to Chicago as an infant, she stayed there for all her life, being influenced by the city and contributing to it. She was passionate about education and committed to making poetry inclusive – visiting schools, reading in hospitals and prisons. To support beginning writers she initiated and self-funded literary contests. She was married and had two children. Read more...

Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. After both of her parents died, she moved to live with her uncle in Baltimore, where she attended Saturday evening salons, a kind of social gathering that years later she will emulate in Paris. At age 24, Stein earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Radcliffe College, afterward studied medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. When she reached age 29, Stein moved to Paris, joining her brother Leo. Together they began to collect post-impressionist paintings and helped artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The two siblings established a literary and artistic salon in their apartment, where they’ve hosted leading artists and writers, like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. After Leo moved to Italy, Gertrude remained in Paris with her assistant and lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas. In her writing, Stein experimented with different kinds of techniques, like Cubism, abstraction, and stream-of-consciousness. Although her work was appreciated, it wasn’t comprehensible to everyone; thus, her only commercial success was “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” that was written from Toklas’s point-of-view. Stein remained in France through the two World Wars, at WW1 she even served as an ambulance driver for the French. During WW2 she hid from the Gestapo in a small village near the Swiss border. Stein died no long after the end of the war when she was 72 years old. Though she wasn’t always understood, Stein had a significant influence on contemporary literature and had been the subject of many artistic works, including musicals, movies, and plays. Read more...

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to a family of abolitionist and transcendentalists, a movement that encouraged the perfection of the individual. She was homeschooled by her father, who was a teacher. During Alcott’s childhood, her family moved to various places. When in Harvard, they tried to establish a utopian community called ‘Fruitlands,’ and when moved back to Concord, they helped hide fugitive slave that escaped via the Underground Railroad. From a young age, Alcott helped to support her family and worked in various jobs, such as a teacher, governess, seamstress, domestic helper, and writer. When she was only 17 years old, she wrote her first book. At first, she published under the pen name Flora Fairfield, and later as A. M. Barnard. She published poems, thrillers, short stories, and juvenile tales. During the American Civil War, Alcott volunteered as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, DC. Her experiences in the hospital inspired her to write “Hospital Sketches,” the book which made her famous. After Alcott accepted an editorship at a girls’ magazine, she was asked to write a book especially for girls, and that resulted in the first part of ‘Little Women,’ inspired by her relationship with her three sisters. She was an enthusiastic supporter of women’s rights, wrote for a women’s rights periodical, encouraged women to vote, and an abolitionist. When the state of Massachusetts passed the law allowing women to vote, she was the first women to register. During her lifetime, Alcott published more than 20 books and almost 300 literary works, in them, she challenged social norms addressing women’s issues and encouraged her readers to do so as well. Read more...

Abigail Smith was born and raised in Massachusetts. Her father was a liberal minister, her mother was a member of the famous Quincy family mother, and she had two sisters. At a time when women were not allowed to receive a formal education, she was homeschooled and satisfied her appetite for knowledge at the family’s library, forming progressive views. After a two-year courtship, she married John Adams, a country lawyer, and became his closest advisor and partner. They settled in the house John had inherited from his father in Braintree, MA. When his practice expanded, John had to frequently travel while Abigail managed their finances, investments, household, and growing family. For a while, they even moved to Boston next to his practice. Between 1784 and 1788, Abigail joined John in his diplomatic missions in Paris and London. On March 4th, 1797, John became the second president of the United States, and she was the first lady. They lived in the Presidential Mansion in Philadelphia and later in the White House in Washington, DC. She was a politically active first lady, made frequent public appearances, and was involved in the decision-making process, paving the way for future first ladies to be proactive figures. When John lost presidential re-election, the family retired to Peacefield in Quincy in 1800. During his frequent travels before and during the presidency, the couple corresponded in more than 1100 letters, where Abigail demonstrated her talent for writing and opinionated spirit. In one of those letters, she urges her husband to consider women’s rights in the new legislation after independence, warning that if not given equal representation: “women will rebel.” He dismissed her suggestion by writing back that it makes him laugh, but her words “remember the ladies” became an iconic feminist slogan. Before her death, she wrote a will favoring her female relatives. It was an act of protest against the laws prohibiting married women from owning assets. Read more...