Women Who Write

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Offering encouragement to readers still in the midst of making college and career choices, Smith's guide emits both platitudes and wisdom about the nature of writing (and creativity), sometimes from the mouths of others. Included are brief biographies of writers from the past--Lorraine Hansberry, Jane Austen, Anne Frank and Agatha Christie among them--and interviews with contemporary writers--such as Beth Henley, the late Norma Klein, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle , Anne Tyler and Tama Janowitz. The look to the future is in the author's advice to aspiring writers: cultivate disciplined writing habits, have patience, read, etc. The biographies are rather pat; the interviews offer the most insight into the writing process: the women profiled often contradict one another (in their discussions of process, or their reasons for being writers), showing the creative act to be as varied as each writer's published or produced works. No ages given. (Sept.)

School Library Journal

Gr 8-12-- Part one of this book gives an accurate and concise introduction to the literary lives of women writers of historical significance such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Lorraine Hansberry, Agatha Christie, George Eliot, and Emily Dickinson. In part two, the various and diverse reasons that contemporary women pursue careers in this field are addressed in interviews. This book should lead readers into lengthier, more informative biographies or autobiographies of these women and their works. Smith has aptly chosen the creme de la creme of female writers who have excelled in diverse areas of writing. She highlights and celebrates novelists, poets, playwrites, and journalists as she presents enlightening insights into their particular craft. In the book's final segment, techniques and advice for those interested in a writing career are introduced. A black-and-white photograph of each woman is included. Smith's list of books for ``Suggested Further Reading'' is limited, but does include many first-rate titles. Elizabeth Hardwick's Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature (Peter Smith, 1983) and Writing of Women (Wesleyan University Pr, 1985) by Phyllis Rose, both adult books, examine in more detail many of the same issues. More for the YA audience is Carolyn G. Heilbrun's eloquent Writing a Woman's Life (Norton, 1988), in which she interweaves the reasons women write with biographical, eye-opening bits and pieces about well-known authors. --April L. Judge, Thousand Oaks Library, CA