Seven Amazing Women Authors who Inspired Me from Middle School Through High School and Informed My Writing Dreams
We all have our heroes. Celebrities, fictional characters, friends or family members that captivated us and held us in awe as children. How many of us wanted to grow up to be our dads? Who wanted to become a firefighter or an astronaut or a superhero? Those were dreams inspired by our childhood heroes.
Growing up, all my heroes were authors.
I always had my nose in a book. By the time I was in middle school, I was already reading adult level books. That also happened to be around the time when the YA genre was first emerging. It didn’t fully manifest until I was in high school.
So, my reading pile was eclectic through those middle school and high school years as I flipped back and forth between Adult books and YA.
While I wasn’t only reading books by women authors, there were certain series and standalones that really captivated me and inspired me, partially because they were written by women. As a young woman myself, I aspired to be them.
That inspiration has been the largest contributing factor to my journey of becoming an author.
7 Inspiring Women Authors
It was more than just their books that inspired me. For each of these women, I fell in love with that they did and I idolized them for who they were.
Anne McCaffery
I was introduced to Anne McCaffery first when I was about ten. My dad started reading one of he books to me. What ten-year-old wouldn’t love a book about dragons living in volcanoes with human riders?
By the time I was in high school, I was still in love with dragons and Dargonriders. I devoured Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series anywhere I could get my hands on them. At the time, I did a lot of thrift store shopping.
Anne McCaffrey was such a talented writer. Her characters were lovable, her world immersive and fully formed with a rich history. In fact, it was the Dragonriders of Pern that really introduced me to the concept of elaborate world building.
In my twenties, I branched out and also read Anne McCaffrey’s Tower and the Hive series as well as The Brain and Brawn Ship Series.
For a women write of adult science fiction, Anne McCaffrey is a true legend. I fell in love with he characters, her worlds, and her elaborate universe. I loved her writing style, her genre, and the fact that she lived in a castle. I can remember the exact day that I first picked up one of her books to read and I hope I always remember that feeling.
I was so in love with the Pern series that I even joined online forums to roleplay original characters inserted into the world of Pern. This was my first cooperative writing experience and it helped a lot with my character development and dialog.
Books by Anne McCaffrey:
Dragonriders of Pern
Brain and Brawn Ship
Tower and the Hive
Of course, she has many other books series I haven’t read, but if they are anything like the ones I have (and I’m sure they are) I recommend them all!
Anne Rice
Before vampires were all the rage with Twilight and The Vampire Diaries there was Anne Rice. She wrote the epic Vampire Chronicles, starting with the legendary Interview With the Vampire.
I could not get enough of Lestat, Armand, Marius, and the other ancient vampires in her supernatural universe. She was the queen of supernatural and I didn’t just want to be like her, I wanted to be her. I wrote several book reports on her books throughout high school.
One concept that Anne Rice introduced me to was a literary device of writing a story from the perspective of a character that is close to the main character but isn’t the main character themselves. That style has stuck with me all these years and I’m implementing it in one of my own series.
I loved her dedication to her characters and her supernatural world. She even lived in New Orleans, I believe right on one of the streets featured in her vampire books. It doesn’t get more dedicated than that!
For a while, Anne Rice’s writing went in a direction that didn’t resonate with me but even then I considered her one of my favorite authors and I was so excited when she came back to the supernatural fold. I think I squealed when I learned about her book Prince Lestat. And that was years after I read any of her books.
Books By Anne Rice:
The Vampire Chronicles
New Tales of Vampires
Lives of the Mayfair Witches
Ramses the Dead
The Wolf Gift Chronicles
The sleeping Beauty Quartet (Under the pseudonym A. N. Raquelaure)
She has many other standalones and series, but the above ones are the ones I loved and recommend.
Libba Bray
A Great and Terrible Beauty was probably the first official YA classified book that I ever read in high school (I had to take a step back from adult books at that point to read things in my age range).
Libba Bray wrote amazing, strong female characters in her fabulous historical fiction series. Her characters challenged societal norms, dealt with complicated issues, and experienced great losses. They did this while navigating an all girl’s school, fighting an ancient battle in a fantasy world, and figuring out where they fit in society as women of different social statuses.
I always loved Libba Bray’s female characters because they were so well fleshed out and well-portrayed. She touched on some very serious topics such as child sexual assault and what it meant to be a lesbian during that time period. Concepts that, at the time, weren’t commonly written about in books at all, let alone YA books.
Her beautiful imagery, strong female characters, and attention to detail was always inspiring to me. I can still pull up memories from my imagination of scenes described in her books with ease, and it has been almost 20 years!
Books by Libba Bray:
Gemma Doyle Trology
Libba Bray has written other books and series that I have not read but should be checked out as well.
Cate Tiernan
When I was in high school, and even in my early 20s, I devoured Cate Tiernan’s Sweep series. It was supernatural, fantasy, and occult all rolled into one. Her books were quick, short reads but I was absolutely in love.
Like Libba Bray, she wrote with a strong female cast. Her stories were contemporary and I felt I could relate a lot to the lead character. So much, so, that it was almost like reading a book about my own experiences in high school.
She dove into lore and mythology that was just captivating to me as it centered around Irish and Celtic lore. With a family connection to Ireland, I was fascinated.
It was Cate Tiernan’s characters and accurate portrayal of Wicca/Witchcraft that I absolutely adored. Since I was dabbling in Wicca at the time, it was (and as far as I know still is) one of the only fiction series devoted to the true practice of Wicca.
Cate Tiernan’s books showed me that I could combine my life story and my personal viewpoints and beliefs with my fiction work, no matter what they evolved into over the years.
Books by Cate Tiernan:
Sweep
Other series and books written by Cate are worth checking out. She has several additional series written under a different name – Gabrielle Charbonnet
Tanith Lee
Another true legend in YA fantasy and science fiction, I wasn’t introduced to Tanith Lee until I was in my early twenties, sadly. I would have liked to get to know her work a lot earlier.
She is one of the most prolific writers I’ve ever had the joy of reading and loving. With over 90 novels published, the number of books she published and the number of series she wrote were most inspiring to me with Tanith Lee.
As someone who currently has 23 novels plotted and planned, 4 of those manuscripts written to a first draft, and several other percolating ideas, she was the one that made me realize, I can do it. It is completely possible for me to write that much and have several popular series.
And then there is the obvious. I just love her work, her genre, and her stories. I have most of her books on my Kindle still and I go back to them from time to time.
Books by Tanith Lee:
S.I.L.V.E.R Series
Aradia
The Secret Books of Paradys
Claidi Journals
She has many, many other series and books. Some I’ve read, some I haven’t, but these four are the ones that stand out most in my mind.
Annette Curtis Klaus
So, if anyone remembers the 2007 movie Blood and Chocolate, I am sorry for bringing it up. What a lot of people don’t know is that the movie is an adaptation, rather a liberally artistic reimagining (one that didn’t resonate with me) of a novel of the same name.
Blood and Chocolate was the first werewolf book I ever read. Sure, I loved werewolves from movies and from the lore but remember, at the time, this was before Twilight, Shiver, and all those other YA werewolf series that came out. There weren’t a lot of YA werewolf books.
In fact, most of the fantasy werewolf books at the time were horror based.
Blood and Chocolate challenged everything I thought I knew about werewolf lore. It had a totally unusual approach to lycanthropy, one that has stuck with me for years.
Another book with a strong female character, as a young woman, this book truly resonated with me. Annette Curtis Klaus taught me that it is okay to defy tropes, rewrite mythology and lore, and put your own spin on age old concepts.
It is a lesson I am so grateful to have learned as a young age because even in my earliest writings I was looking for ways to challenge what people considered “normal” in fantasy and science fiction.
Books by Annette Curtis Klaus:
Blood and Chocolate
The Silver Kiss
She has a few other books that I didn’t read.
Diana Wynne Jones
I’m sad to say that I’ve only read one of Dianna Wynne Jones’s books. However, she has a plethora of children and YA books, series, and adult books.
The one book of hers that I did read was Howl’s Moving Castle.
It was such an amazing experience that she has forever made it onto my list of inspiring authors.
Dianna Wynne Jones wrote this amazing fantasy story with a unique take on fairy tales, an elaborately built world, and my personal favorite, compelling female characters. She got the female villain just right as well!
For a young woman that had big dreams and aspirations, any book with well written female characters was inspiring to me personally and my own goals as well as to my writing. Howl’s Moving Castle had the perfect blend of fantasy, magic, conflict, and romance. It was truly a masterpiece for all ages.
Her writing encouraged me not to be afraid of being a little weird or unexpected in my own writing.
Books by Diana Wynne Jones:
Howl’s Moving Castle
There are so many more books of hers to check out, I do encourage it.
Final Thoughts
I believe that it is important to show children of all genders, races, sexual orientations, etc. that they can aspire to be whoever and whatever they want. Without these women role models in my childhood and without their amazing female characters, I never would have been so dedicated and determined in my writing career.
Aspirations in children and adolescents show through mimicry. If I can inspire any young women to follow their dreams and not be held back, then I will feel like I’ve reached my dreams. Because when I aspired to be like these seven amazing women, it wasn’t just with what they did or who they were, it was how they inspired me.
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