Best Famous Women Poets of All-time

Emily Dickinson, born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, is one of the premier American poets of the 19th century. She is an American poetess who died at the age of 56.

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning African American poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 8 1928 and died in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on May 28, 2014. Angelou was also a dancer, an actress and a singer.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Plath posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love poem Remember, and for the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.. English poet

Sarojini Naidu, (born as Sarojini Chattopadhyaya) also known by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu was one of the formers of the Indian Constitution. Naidu was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh state. Her birthday is celebrated as women's day all over India.

Alice Walker is an American poet, activist, author and feminist. She is one of the most celebrated in modern history. Her most famous work, The Color Purple, won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and it remains one of the bestselling books in the United States.

Nikki Giovanni is one of the best-known African-American poets who reached prominence during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Sandra Cisneros, born in Chicago, Illinois on December 21, 1954, is a United States author and poet best known for her novel The House on Mango Street. She is also the author of Caramelo, published by Knopf in 2002. Much of her writing is influenced by her Mexican-American heritage. She the only daughter in a Mexican-American family of seven children.

Carol Ann Duffy is a British poet and playwright born in Glasgow, Scotland. Duffy is the first female and first Scottish Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

Sara Teasdale was an American lyrical poet. She is the total embodiment of a tortured soul who had a gift for artistic expression. She was born on August 8, 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri. She died at the age of 48 on January 29, 1933 in New York City.

A celebrated Romantic English poet of the Victorian era, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is still one of the most influential figures within English poetry.

Anne Gray Harvey Sexton, American poet and playwright, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ralph Harvey, a successful woolen manufacturer, and Mary Gray Staples. Sexton is known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die.

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC, O.Ont, FRSC is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.. poet novelist essayist

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of "The Elements of Style." The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”---Dorothy Parker Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American woman poet.. African-American poet; 30th US Poet Laureate

Jane Austen, a gifted English novelist, daughter of a clergyman in N. Hampshire; member of a quiet family circle, occupied herself in writing without eye to publication, and only in mature womanhood thought of writing for the press. Her first novel, "Sense and Sensibility," was published in 1811, and was followed by "Pride and Prejudice," her masterpiece, "Persuasion," and others, her interest being throughout in ordinary quiet cultured life, and the delineation of it, which she achieved in an inimitably charming manner. She is the mother of the English 19th-century novel, as Scott is the father of it" (1775-1816).

Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse."

An Irish poet.

Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds has been the recipient of many awards including the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She earned a BA at Stanford University and a PhD at Columbia University.

Delmira Agustini was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on October 24, 1886. She is considered one of the greatest female Latin American and Uruguayan poets of the early 20th century.

Louisa May Alcott, born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, was an American novelist best known for her novel Little Women. She died on March 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Anne Dudley Bradstreet was the first female poet to be published from either Puritan America or England. Her work met with a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World.. Landed in Salem Massachusetts June 14 1630 America's first published poet

Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. .

Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.

Gabriela Mistral is Chilean poet educator diplomat and feminist; Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, born on April 7, 1889 in Vicuña, Chile.

Audre Geraldine Lorde was a pioneering African American poet, essayist, and activist whose work explored the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Born in 1934 in New York City, Lorde published numerous volumes of poetry and essays that confronted social injustices and celebrated the beauty and resilience of marginalized communities. She was a prominent voice in the feminist and civil rights movements, advocating for the empowerment of women and people of color. Lorde's writing continues to inspire and provoke critical discussions about identity, power, and social change.

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1993, the second African American to be appointed, and received a second special appointment in 1999. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.. American poet and author; US Poet Laureate

Phillis Wheatley was a famous poet who was born in West Africa, sold into slavery at a young age, and brought to America. Despite her circumstances, Wheatley's exceptional talent for poetry caught the attention of her owners, leading to her education and publication of her poetry. As the first African-American woman to publish her work, Wheatley played a significant role in shaping American literature and challenging racial biases during the 18th century. Her poetry often addressed themes of freedom, equality, and the humanity of African-Americans, leaving behind a lasting legacy as an influential figure in American history.

Anna Akhmatova was a modernist poet during the "Silver Age". She became one of the leading female poets in Russia during the turmoil of the World Wars and the Russian Revolution. She was born on June 23, 1889 in Bolshoy Fonton near Odessa, Russia and grew up in St. Petersburg.

Sarah Flower Adams (February 22, 1805 - Au­gust 14, 1848) was an English poet known for her most popular work, the 1841 immortal hymn , "Nearer My God To Thee".

Louise Gluck is a highly acclaimed American poet known for her introspective and emotionally charged work. Born in 1943 in New York City, Gluck has received numerous awards for her poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize for her collection "The Wild Iris." Her writing explores themes of love, loss, and the complexities of the human experience, capturing the reader's attention with her poignant and beautifully crafted verses. With her distinct voice and poetic mastery, Gluck has made a significant impact in the literary world.

Sappho is an Ancient Greek lyric poetess, born in Eresos on the island of Lesbos in Greece. No contemporary historical sources exist for Sappho's life—only her poetry.

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels are English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.

An American poet and writer.. American poet and short-story writer; US Poet Laureate

Marge Piercy is a renowned and prolific American poet, novelist, and social activist. Born in 1936, she has published numerous poetry collections, including "The Moon Is Always Female" and "What Are Big Girls Made Of?". She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II. Known for her honest and fiercely feminist writing, Piercy's work explores themes of social justice, inequality, and the power dynamics between gender and sexuality. Through her poignant and thought-provoking poetry, Piercy has left a lasting impact on the literary world and continues to inspire readers with her powerful words.

Emma Lazarus was an American Jewish poet born in New York City. She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1912.. American poet; best known for her poem The New Colossus

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."

Guadalupe Teresa Amor Schmidtlein, who wrote as Pita Amor, was a Mexican poet. During her lifetime she was known for her rebelliousness and audacity in her lifestyle. Her poetry, influenced by Juana Inés de la Cruz ("The 10th Muse") and Francisco de Quevedo, is notable for its direct expressions about metaphysical issues stated in the first person.

Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books. She was a 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts.. African American poet; associated with the Black Arts Movement

Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet and critic of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts, who played a significant role in the imagist movement of the early 20th century. Born into a wealthy New England family in 1874, Lowell emerged as one of the leading voices of modernist poetry, known for her experimentation with form and her vivid imagery. She published numerous collections of poetry and was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Despite facing criticism for her personal life, including her lesbian relationships, Lowell's legacy endures as an influential figure in American poetry.

Anaïs Nin (Spanish:  [ana'is 'nin] ; born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was an American author born to Spanish-Cuban parents in France, where she was also raised. She spent some time in Spain and Cuba but lived most of her life in the United States where she became an established author. She published journals (which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death), novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and erotica. A great deal of her work, including Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously.

Judith Viorst (born February 3, 1931) is an American author, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is perhaps best known [ citation needed ] for her children's literature, such as The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.

Julia de Burgos is considered by many as the greatest poet born in Puerto Rico, and, along with Gabriela Mistral, one of the greatest female poets of Latin America. As an advocate of Puerto Rican independence, she served as Secretary General of the Daughters of Freedom, the women's branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was also an ardent civil rights activist for women and African/Afro-Caribbean writers.

Judith Wright was an Australian poet, environmentalist, and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She was also a highly acclaimed critic of Australian poetry.

The pen name of Mary Anne Evans who was an English novelist.. (1819–1880)

Mary Elizabeth Frye was a female American poet and florist. She is best known as the poet of the famous poem "Do not stand at my grave and weep." Widowed in 1964, Frye is survived by her daughter.

. English poet

Linda Pastan (born May 27, 1932 in New York) is an American poet of Jewish background. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. She is known for writing short poems that address topics like family life, domesticity, motherhood, the female experience, aging, death, loss and the fear of loss, as well as the fragility of life and relationships.

Annie Dillard is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut .

An American poet from New York.. educator and Poets Laureate of Maryland

An Australian poet, actress, writer, teacher, artist and a campaigner for Aboriginal rights.. Australian poet political activist artist and educator the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse

. British-born American poet; associated with the Black Mountain poets

Erica Jong (née Mann ; born March 26, 1942) is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.

Sherley Anne Williams was born in Bakersfield, California and was an African-American poet. Many of her works tell stories about her life in the African-American community. When she was little her family picked cotton in order to get money. At the age of eight her father died of tuberculosis and when she was sixteen her mother died. In 1966 she earned her bachelors degree in English at what is now California State University at Fresno and she received her master's degree at Brown University in 1972. Her works include collections of poetry such as The Peacock Poems (1975), the novel Dessa Rose (1986), and two picture books. She also published the groundbreaking work Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study of Neo-Black Literature in 1972.

Jackie Kay is a Scottish poet and novelist. She has published five collections of poetry for adults (The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize, a Saltire Award and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award) and several for children. She was awarded an MBE in 2006.

. Latin American Modernist poet

Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander (July 7, 1915 – November 30, 1998) was an African-American poet and writer. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she wrote as Margaret Walker. One of her best-known poems is For My People.. African American writer

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, then at the age of 33 she moved to New York, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Josefina Pla was a Spanish poet, playwright, art critic, painter and journalist.

. British poet critic and scholar

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: American poet. Ella Wheeler Wilcox poems, poetry, biography, quotes, poems, Ella Wheeler Wilcox biography.

Mari Evans (born July 16, 1923 in Toledo, Ohio) is an African-American poet, living in Indianapolis.. African American poet

Rosario Castellanos was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by César Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century.

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. When she was 19 Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom, where she became friends with modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. During the First World War she contracted extrapulmonary tuberculosis, which led to her death at the age of 34.

An American poet, critic, and reviewer.. American poet translator and critic

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses. Called the "Godmother of Punk", her work was a fusion of rock and poetry. Smith's most widely known song is "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On November 17, 2010, she won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids.. American singer-songwriter poet and visual artist

Lisa Zaran: American poet. Lisa Zaran poems, poetry, biography, quotes, poems, Lisa Zaran biography.

Julie Hill Alger was an American poet whose most critically acclaimed poem, Death In the Family,compared the death of a loved one to the death of a pet. She was born in Norfolk, Virginia on March 13, 1927 and died in Amherst, Massachusetts on January 13, 1995.

Helen Dunmore is a British poet, novelist and childrens writer. Educated at the University of York, she now lives in Bristol.. British poet novelist and children's writer

Maggie Estep is an American poet and writer. She has published six books and released two spoken word albums: Love is a Dog From Hell and No More Mr. Nice Girl.. American writer musician slam poet

An American writer, poet, feminist and playwright.. American Modernist innovator in prose and poetry art collector

Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.. American Modernist poet and writer

Sophie Hannah (born 1971) is a British poet and novelist. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and between 1999 and 2001 a junior research fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge .

Richard Crashaw, English poet, styled "the divine," was part of the Seventeenth-century Metaphysical School of poets.. English poet; one of the central figures associated with the Metaphysical poets in the 17th century

Mary Darby Robinson: English poet. Mary Darby Robinson poems, poetry, biography, quotes, poems, Mary Darby Robinson biography.

Lucy Maud Montgomery: Canadian poet. Lucy Maud Montgomery poems, poetry, biography, quotes, poems, Lucy Maud Montgomery biography.

Anne Finch (née Kingsmill), Countess of Winchilsea (April 1661 – 5 August 1720), was an English poet, the third child of Sir William Kingsmill of Sydmonton Court and his wife, Anne Haslewood. She was well-educated as her family believed in good education for girls as well as for boys.

An American poet.. American poet; fourth US Poet Laureate

Anne Brontë (/ ' b r n t i / ; 17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.

Rebecca Anne Wood Elson (1960 — 1999) was a Canadian - American astronomer and writer .

. British poet author critic

Fleda Brown, born in 1944 in Columbia, Missouri, is an American poet and author. She is also known as Fleda Brown Jackson.

Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator

Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has also been connected to the Beat poets.

Mary Oliver is an American poet who won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28; No Voyage and Other Poems, originally printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published many works of poetry and prose.

Florence Anthony (October 21, 1947 – March 20, 2010) was an American poet and educator who legally changed her name to Ai Ogawa (Japanese : Literally: "Love Stream" ). She won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems.

Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, Arabic poetess born in Cordova in 1001 - died March 26, 1091, was an Andalusian poet.

An Austrian poet and author.. Austrian poet and author

Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland ; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was an English author and poet; she published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit .

Joy Harjo (born May 9, 1951) is a Native American poet, musician, and author. She is often cited as playing a formidable role in the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has coined the Native American Renaissance .

American poet associated with the deep image confessional and Beat poets.

Lisel Mueller (born February 8, 1924) is an American poet. She won the U.S. National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

Katherine Philips was an Anglo-Welsh poet.. Anglo-Welsh poet

. English poet and novelist

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825-February 22, 1911), was an African-American writer, lecturer, and political activist, who promoted abolition, civil rights, women's rights, and temperance. She helped found or held high office in several national progressive organizations. She is best remembered today for her poetry and fiction, which preached moral uplift and counseled the oppressed how to free themselves from their demoralized condition.

. Russian and Soviet poet

Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820) was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the sexes—that women, like men, had the capability of intellectual accomplishment and should be able to achieve economic independence. Her landmark essay "On the Equality of the Sexes," published in the Massachusetts Magazine in March and April 1790 predated Mary Wollstonecraft 's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in Britain in 1792 and in Philadelphia in 1794.

. American writer and poet

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980-1987. She was a 1998 Guggenheim Fellow. and in 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also won a Lannan Literary Award.. Canadian poet essayist translator and professor

An American poet and novelist who was popular before World War II.. American poet and novelist