Love N.K. Jemisin's books
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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I saw her give a talk once. Someone asked her about the environment or climate change, and she said something like "There's like 100 people responsible for most of the problem, and we know where they live."
The crowd loved this answer. The guy moderating the event made nervous noises.
Agree with all of the above, would add T. Kingfisher for fantasy, Iris Murdoch for heady philosophical fiction, Agatha Christie for murder mystery, Clarissa Pinkola Estés for empowering fables and explorations of feminine archetypes, Mary Oliver for poetry, and Lady Margaret Cavendish for a great sci-fi novel from 1666.
If you like Star Trek:
DC Fontana
Toni Morrison
Angela Carter
Virginia Wolfe
Shirley Jackson
Octavia Butler
Tamsyn Muir comes to mind for her excellent locked tomb series
This has been living rent-free in my head since I started reading it a month ago, and now I'm rereading it already.
Le Guin
I don't know about "of all time" but "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett should be required reading.
Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis was intense but beautifully conveyed, full agree.
A lot of folk are giving great answers here.
I just want to add Andre Norton to the list. She was a pioneer in Sci-Fi and her fantasy work was great too.
Mary Ann Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. Middlemarch is imho one of the best novels ever written in the English language.
I'm disappointed that no one has mentioned Lois McMaster Bujold yet.
Ann Leckie and Becky Chambers are definitely up there
I have no idea what this question is asking but I like Donna Tartt
A lot of greats have been mentioned already, so I’ll add Han Kang to the mix.
I'm voting for Julian May (yes, she was female). Her best series of books were the Saga of Pliocene Exile and the Galactic Milieu trilogy (in 4 parts).
Some people are about to lose their marbles but just going by the numbers: J. K. Rowling.
She authored the 4th best selling single book of all time and the best selling book series of all time, by quite the margin.
Definitely one of the greats. Her characters have a life that is missing in quite a few of the other greats. Her world building and story telling are fantastic, especially considering she didn't do the kind of historic world building Tolkien engaged in before even telling his stories. J. K. Rowling definitely belongs on the list of great authors in general, not just great female authors.
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Henriette Walter. Her works on French linguistics are both fascinating and informative.
Iris Murdoch. I've only read The Sea, The Sea, but it's one of the books that got me into literature when I was a teenager. I really need to get around to exploring more of her work.
Tanith Lee, Mary Gentle, Melanie Rawn deserve mentions. (MZB I haven't been able to read since learning...) Anais Nin was mostly intentionally writing trash but is fun
Ellen Booraem (YA, she's great at writing books from a totally different angle), Oyinkan Braithwaite (she's only written two books so far but they're great), Katharine Kerr.
metacommantary: "
Who is the best X of all time?"
All answers are about am*rican or british X.
This thread also made me realise that I do not read that many woman-writ books.
answer:
I enjoyed books by : Ursula K. Le Guin, JK Rowling, Patricia Ann McKillip, and Kathy Reichs.
Post the same question in a comm that uses another language that you speak and see what answers you get there.
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