Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty works, including fiction, poetry and critical essays, and her books have been published in over thirty-five countries. She has won many literary awards and prizes.Ali Smith was born in Inverness and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of three collections of stories and three novels. Hotel World was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize in 2001 and her latest novel, The Accidental, won the 2006 Whitbread Novel Award. Ali reviews regularly for the Guardian, the Scotsman and the TLS.Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an award-winning writer, living in Canada with her family. Her novels are
Room,
The Sealed Letter,
Landing,
Life Mask,
Slammerkin,
Hood and
Stir-fry; short-story collections
Astray,
Three and a Half Deaths (UK ebook),
Touchy Subjects,
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and
Kissing the Witch; and literary history including
Inseparable,
We Are Michael Field, and
Passions Between Women as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
Frog Music, her new novel, comes out in Spring 2014.Kirsty Logan's books include
Now She is Witch,
Things We Say In The Dark, The
Gloaming,
The Gracekeepers,
A Portable Shelter and
The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales. She lives in Glasgow with her wife, baby and rescue dog.Caroline O'Donoghue is a
New York Times best-selling author and the host of the award-winning
podcast
Sentimental Garbage. She has
written two novels for adults,
Promising Young Women, which was shortlisted for the
AN Post Irish Book Awards -
Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year,
and
Scenes of a Graphic Nature, which was longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. She was also longlisted for the supernatural series for teenagers,
All Our Hidden Gifts. She was born in Ireland and currently lives in London.Linda Grant is author of four non-fiction books and eight novels. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000, the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage in 2006 and holds honorary doctorates from the University of York and Liverpool John Moores University.
The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and went on to win the South Bank Show Award;
The Dark Circle was shortlisted for the 2017 Women's Prize for Fiction;
A Stranger City won the 2000 Wingate Literary Prize. Linda Grant lives in London.
Susie Boyt is the author of five other acclaimed novels and the much-loved memoir My Judy Garland Life which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse and serialised on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life and fashion for the Financial Times for the past fourteen years and has recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James. She is also a director at the Hampstead Theatre.
She lives in London with her family.
Stella Duffy is an award-winning writer of seventeen novels, over seventy short stories and fourteen plays. In 2016 she received the OBE for services to the arts. Stella is also a psychotherapist working in private practice and for a low-cost community mental health service. She is currently completing her doctorate in Existential Psychotherapy, researching the embodied experience of postmenopause.
Her website is: stelladuffy.blog
Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago's most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. Her first book,
The Dark Room, (2001) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and made into the feature film
Lore. In 2003, she was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2011 she received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Field Study, her collection of short stories published in 2004, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel,
Afterwards (2007) third novel
The Walk Home (2014), and fourth novel
A Boy in Winter (2017), were all longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.
CN Lester is an academic, writer, musician and leading LGBTI activist. Co-founder of the UK's first national queer youth organisation, they curate the trans art event Transpose for Barbican and work internationally as a trans and feminist educator and speaker. Their work has featured on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, SBS, The Guardian, ABC, The Independent, Newsnight, New Internationalist and at Sydney Opera House.
A singer-songwriter and a classical performer, composer and researcher, CN specialises in early and modern music, particularly by women composers.
They live in London and drink too much coffee. Trans Like Me is their first book.
cnlester.com
'Wonderful ... all killer, no filler' Red Magazine
'Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring' Daily Mirror
'Where power and feminist rage meet' Stylist
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A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers:
Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O'Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeymi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig.
DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO.
For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story.
In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time.
'A slick collection of clever tales, with something for bluestockings and banshees alike' Guardian
'Delightful, thought-provoking' Louisa Young, Perspectives
To celebrate Virago's fiftieth birthday, fifteen award-winning, bestselling authors have written original stories embodying the spirit of Virago: feminist, fearless, fun, wild and defiant of convention.
