Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
1. Isabel Allende
2. Diana Athill
3. Jane Austen
4. Alan Bennett
5. Anne Brontë
6. Charlotte Brontë
7. Emily Brontë
8. Willa Cather
9. Kate Chopin
10. Colette
11. Junot Díaz
12. Charles Dickens
13. Olivia Howard Dunbar
14. William Faulkner
15. F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. Elizabeth Gaskell
17. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
18. Gail Godwin
19. Jane Green
20. Lorraine Hansberry
21. Ernest Hemingway
22. Georgette Heyer
23. Zora Neale Hurston
24. James Joyce
25. Jamaica Kincaid
26. Jhumpa Lahiri
27. Wally Lamb
28. Joan Steinau Lester
29. Alison Lurie
30. Katherine Mansfield
31. Alice Munro
32. Flannery O’Connor
33. Joyce Carol Oates
34. Dorothy Parker
35. Katherine Anne Porter
36. Matthew Quick
37. Nina Sankovitch
38. Dani Shapiro
39. Mary Shelley
40. Sandi Kahn Shelton
41. Elizabeth Taylor
42. Christina Thompson
43. William Trevor
44. Joanna Trollope
45. Gail Tsukiyama
46. Anne Tyler
47. Thrity Umrigar
48. Helen Wan
49. Virginia Woolf
50. Dan Zevin
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Bibliography
Text Permissions
Photo Credits
Back Cover