15. Yaa Gyasi (born 1989)

Ghanaian-American Gyasi may have written just the one book to date but Homegoing (2016) isn’t just any debut. The tale of two half-sisters (Effia marries a British governor, Esi is held captive in the cells of Cape Coast Castle), each chapter follows their descendants’ fates as one line experiences slavery in the American South, Harlem and present-day racism in America while the other line navigates the familial relations and colonisation of Ghana. What makes Homegoing so powerful is how it simply draws a line between the horrors of the past and the politics of the present.

14. Eimear McBride (born 1976)

Brave and pioneering, McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing (2013) and 2016’s The Lesser Bohemians are almost raw to the touch while 2020’s Strange Hotel leaves you confounded and thrilled. Exploring everything from brutality, abandonment, family abuse and self-abasement to love, tenderness, humour and joy, McBride somehow has found a way to translate our inner selves onto the page through her unique use of language but also an understanding of literature’s most innovative voices.

13. Sally Rooney (born 1991)

The youngest writer on this list, Rooney’s Normal People (2018) has become a sensation that captured a generation. Her tale of Marianne and Connell resonates with anyone who’s ever been in love, a gauche teenager, a lost soul, broken and found a way to mend (maybe)… Written in a deceptively simple prose (which is actually incredibly hard to pull off), once you pick it up, you’ll be lost for hours. Her 2017 debut, Conversations With Friends, is more divisive but actually if you love horrible people doing rotten things to each other, it’s a brilliant read.

12. Sarah Hall (born 1974) by Amy Adams, production editor, Stylist

“Being from the Lake District, I might be a little biased when it comes to favouring fellow Cumbrian Sarah Hall – but her novels do far more than whisk you up north (though for this read Haweswater (2002) or her brilliant The Wolf Border (2015)). From the dystopian, Margaret Atwood-esque The Carhullan Army (2007) to the Booker-shortlisted story of a Coney Island tattoo artist, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), her original, evocative writing deserves a place on every bookshelf.”

11. Jesmyn Ward (born 1977)

From the horror of Hurricane Katrina in Salvage The Bones (2011), the enduring legacy of slavery in 2017’s Sing Unburied Sing to her non-fiction book about the deaths of her brother and four other young men in her hometown, Men We Reaped (2013), Ward’s work unflinchingly explores the truth about race and America. When asked by the TLS about which writers are regularly underrated she replied: “Name most women writers. Name most writers of colour or queer writers or writers from marginalised communities, and you have multiple answers to pick from. I think there’s a common misconception that such writers don’t write universal stories. I, of course, think that is bullshit.”

10. Angie Thomas (born 1988)

In 2018, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give became one of the year’s most powerful and talked about books. Inspired by #BlackLivesMatter and America’s systemic racism, Thomas tells the tale of Starr caught between her white middle class school and her black neighbourhood – two worlds that crash and collide when her friend Khalil is killed in front of her in a police shooting. It also managed to build a world of characters you care about written with warmth and wit. Her follow-up, On The Come Up (2019), is just as captivating.

9. Curtis Sittenfeld (born 1975)

To paraphrase that popular wit George W Bush, “you’re either with us or you’re against us”. Curtis Sittenfeld is one of those authors who can split the room – evangelists on one side, cold-hearted buffoons on the other (we’re not biased). However, if you enjoy wry, witty prose that’s written with what looks like god-given talent, then any of Sittenfeld’s novels are for you. Prep (2005), The Man Of My Dreams (2006), American Wife (2008, loosely based on the life story of Laura Bush, wife of aforementioned Dubya), and Eligible (2016, it’s part of the Austen Project, reimagining Pride And Prejudice in modern-day Cincinnati and nails Austen’s tone) all remind you why reading is a pastime that not only defines but also enhances your life. Next up is Rodham – her take on how history would have unfolded if Hillary hadn’t married Bill…

8. Tayari Jones (born 1970)

In 2019, Jones won the Women’s Prize For Fiction for her devastating story, An American Marriage (2018), the tale of a black man, Roy, imprisoned after being wrongly identified as a rapist and his relationship with his wife, Celestial. With plaudits from Barack Obama and Oprah, it’s relatable and emotional while turning an unerring eye on the systemic incarceration of black people in the States. Her third novel which has just been released in the UK, Silver Sparrow, is just as powerful exploring bigamy and the lives of two sisters.

7. Jennifer Egan (born 1962) by author Hannah Kohler

“Jennifer Egan is an iconoclast. From Black Box – a series of dispatches from the New Yorker’s Twitter account in 2012 about a spy living in Europe in the near future, to the genre-bending The Keep (2006), she’s a writer who takes traditional forms of story, shakes them down and transforms them into something new. Her Pulitzer-winning A Visit From The Goon Squad (2010) is about time, its slipperiness and stickiness, how it drags and telescopes, how the weighty moments in a person’s life evaporate into history, how time is anything but linear – and she brings this to life through form, making the prose pause and hurtle backwards and forwards, one section dispensing with prose altogether in favour of PowerPoint. It’s experimental and trippy, but there’s nothing impenetrable or pretentious about it. Egan’s writing is beautiful and wise and I always look forward to what she’ll write next, because it’s always something new.”
The Outside Lands by Hannah Kohler is out now (£6, Picador)

6. Bernardine Evaristo (born 1959) by Sapphire Rees, Campaigns Officer, Penguin General

“Bernardine Evaristo’s writing sheds light on aspects of British society which are underrepresented in literature, and her characters are truly diverse in terms of gender, race, age, sexuality, geography and class. From a 74-year-old, gay, Antiguan-born Hackney local in Mr Loverman, to the characters in her Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other who include a 93-year-old black farmer in Northumberland, a non-binary person in their 20s, and a black lesbian woman in an abusive relationship, Bernardine Evaristo seeks out the people in Britain we don’t hear from enough and brings them to life on the page. As Maggie Gee wrote in The Guardian: ‘If you don’t yet know her work, you should – she says things about modern Britain that no one else does’.”

The 107 female authors everyone should have on their bookshelf