As someone who aspired to become a writer from a very young age, I’ve always pondered as a child why I never studied many women writers in literature classes – so much so that, due to the little exposure I had to women voices, my writing started to adopt a masculine character, tone and voice. ‘Why are all of your characters male?’ one teacher asked me after they read a story I wrote. I never realized it until recently as a woman in my 20s. Looking back at my writings and my favorite authors that have inspired me, I’ve realized just how little influence women writers have had on my career. Today, as I read on the history of women writers and their careers, and how many obstacles they’ve faced to earn the recognition they rightly deserve, I came across the fact that some of them had to change their names to be published. While men enjoyed the privilege of fame and acknowledgement for their work, women writers had to hide, conceal, and bury their names and identity. Here are a few women writers that had to use an anonymous…
