International Women’s Day 2015: 13 Women of BookThug You Need to Read

Meet the amazing women of BookThug. In honour of International Women’s Day 2015,  we’ve put together a recommended reading list of contemporary women writers, both emerging and established, we think you need to read. These 13 brilliant and fierce women push at boundaries in unexpected ways, and take you, the reader, to places you never before imagined. They write about relevant issues for women, and men, everywhere. Their writing demands that it stay with you long after the book ends; they challenge and haunt you, are daring and provocative, and refuse to go gently into the good night (or anywhere).  They play with and distort language, turn traditional tropes inside out, defy traditional narrative and story arc, and leave you breathless. Whether exploring themes of the human body, sexual identity, domestic abuse, mental health, marriage and relationships, families, self exploration, or science and the environment, these women all write from a place of raw and brutal honesty.

Full disclosure: CBC Books assembled a similar, and pretty kick-ass list, of  12 Canadian women writers you need to read, and we highly recommend you check out all of them. Our only concern was that they left out some significant voices (it’s not their fault, the CBC is limited in what they can do), so in true BookThug advocacy form, we decided to assemble our own list, and we encourage you to do the same. Ours is a bakers dozen. Imitation being the highest form of flattery, and all that.