2 Anais Nin(Diarist)
French-Cuban-American diarist, essayist, and novelist Anais Nin wrote several volumes of journals, erotica, novels, critical studies, essays, and short stories. Her journals and diaries are among her most studied works. She had a deep interest in psychoanalysis and studied it extensively with René Allendy and Otto Rank. Critics consider her one of the finest writers of female erotica.
3 Joyce Carol Oates(Writer)
4 Sarah Vowell(Author of Seven Nonfiction Books on American History and Culture)

Bestselling author and essayist Sarah Vowell is known for her expertise in American history and her books such as Assassination Vacation and Unfamiliar Fishes. She is also a regular on the radio program This American Life and has voiced Violet in the animated film The Incredibles.
5 Sandra Cisneros(Writer)
6 Joan Didion(Screenwriter, Novelist, Journalist, Writer, Essayist)

7 Louise Glück(Poet)
8 Adrienne Rich(American poet)
9 Katherine Anne Porter(Journalist, Essayist, Writer, Novelist)
10 Madeleine L'Engle(Author)

Madeleine L'Engle soared to fame with her Newbery Medal-winning bestselling young adult novel A Wrinkle in Time, which was made into a Disney film later. Born to a writer father and a pianist mother, L’Engle had penned her first story at age 5 and had also tried her luck in theater.
11 Mary Karr(Poet)

12 Flannery O'Connor(Novelist)

13 Cheryl Strayed(Writer)

14 Sylvia Browne(Essayist, Psychic)

15 Barbara Kingsolver(Novelist, Poet, Essayist)
16 Jamaica Kincaid(Novelist)
17 Rebecca Solnit(Writer)

18 Kathy Acker(Author)

19 Zhang Ailing(Writer)

20 Joy Harjo(Poet)

21 Marilynne Robinson(Novelist)

22 Bebe Moore Campbell(Author)

23 Lydia Davis(Writer)

24 Linda Moulton Howe(Journalist, documentary film maker best known for her work as a ufologist)

25 Laila Lalami(Novelist)

26 Emily Gould(Writer, Essayist, Children's writer)

27 Annie Dillard(Author)

28 Diane Ackerman(Poet, essayist, and naturalist known for a 1990 nonfiction work entitled A Natural History of the Senses)

29 Leslie Marmon Silko(American author)

Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer who played an important role in the First Wave of the Native American Renaissance. Best known for her essays, short story collections, and poems, Silko was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas (NWCA) in 1994. In 2020, she won the prestigious Robert Kirsch Award.
30 Ellen Willis(Essayist)

31 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick(Academic Scholar)

32 Cynthia Ozick(Short Story Writer)

33 Diane Johnson(Novelist)

34 Shirley Hazzard(Novelist)

Australian-born American author Shirley Hazzard is best known for her Lost Man Booker Prize-shortlisted book The Bay of Noon and the National Book Award-winning The Great Fire. She has also penned various non-fiction volumes on the United Nations, where she had worked as a typist for a decade.
35 Laura Riding(Poet)

36 June Jordan(Poet)

37 Sarah Ruhl(Playwright whose most popular plays are Eurydice (2003), The Clean House (2004), and In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) (2009))

38 Seyla Benhabib(Philosopher, Writer)

39 Tess Gallagher(Poet)

40 Carolyn Forché(Poet)

41 Charlotte Forten Grimké(Poet)

42 Imbolo Mbue(Writer)

43 Cornelia Otis Skinner(Author)

44

45 Ana Castillo(Novelist)

46 Florence King(American Novelist, Essayist & Columnist)

47 Judith Sargent Stevens Murray(Advocate)

48 Frederica Sagor Maas(Screenwriter, Playwright, Journalist, Autobiographer, Essayist, Writer)

49 Bobbie Ann Mason(Novelist)

50 Jessie Redmon Fauset(Editor)
