Our Favorite Feminists, Old and New
This list, created by the editors, editorial assistants, readers and staff of Fringe, and compiled by Ellen Mahoney (with help from Katie Spencer and Sarah Dowden), represents a nowhere-near-complete list of our favorite feminists, old and new. Please enjoy OUR interpretation of what it means to be feminist. Click on a name to get more information. Have a name to add? E-mail fringethemagazine@gmail.com with suggestions.
- Kathy Acker – Postmodern pro-sex writer
- Sofonisba Anguisolla – First woman painter of the Renaissance, a mentor to the women (and men) who followed
- Aphra Behn – All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn… for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. —Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
- Rosa Bonheur – French realist painter and sculptor, specializing in animals; for her masculine work attire and popularity in the male-dominated galleries, she is seen as an early feminist
- Romaine Brooks – Truman Capote called her studio “the all-time ultimate gallery of all the famous dykes from 1880 to 1935 or thereabouts.”
- The Burtons – Five daughters (and their mother) who collaborate in the boutique film industry
- Octavia Butler – African-American science fiction writer; became first science fiction writer to receive MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant in 1995
- Emily Carr – Canadian landscape painter and author known for recording the art and culture of Pacific Northwest First Nations tribes, named by her peers “The Mother of Modern Arts”
- Rosalba Carriera – Venetian Rococo painter known for her portrait miniatures, in demand all her life, from Watteau to the King of Poland
- Ana Castillo – Chicana writer and teacher
- Julia Child – The comical, the ebullient, the buttery; trickster, athlete, patriot, an adventurer, she forever changed culinary America
- h.d. – Writer, imagist poet, actress
- Meta Fuller – Sculptor, one of the first African-American artists to create Afrocentric themed work; trained with Rodin
- Eva Hesse – German sculptor of extraordinary depth, her career was cut short by brain cancer at age 33
- Brenda Hillman – Poet, teacher, woman of exceptional activism
- bell hooks – Writer, teacher and lecturer; author of Feminism for Everybody and Ain’t I a Woman
- Gayl Jones – tragic and enigmatic novelist
- June Jordan – Poet, activist and teacher
- Frida Kahlo – Mexican painter; active communist supporter; she refused to remove her unibrow or moustache
- Angelica Kauffmann – Swiss painter
- Kathe Kollowitz – German printmaker and sculptor known for portrayals of misery and humanity
- Lee Krasner – ambitious and dedicated abstract painter, also known as Jackson Pollock’s helpmeet
- Audre Lorde – Poet, essayist, activist
- Carole Maso – American novelist, essayist and teacher
- Ana Mendieta – Cuban-American performance artist known for her shock value and iconic representation of the female form
- Kate Millet – American feminist and writer; best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics
- Paula Modersohn-Becker – one of the most important representatives of early expressionism, who believed an artist’s life did not preclude a family life
- Asra Q. Nomani – Radically feminist American Muslim, writer and activist
- Indra K. Nooyi – President and CEO of Pepsi; named 4th most powerful woman in Business by Forbes in 2006
- Annie Oakley – Legendary markswoman, encouraged women to take up shooting as a form of self-sufficiency and self-defense
- Kimberly Peirce – actor (In the Company of Women) and director (Boys Don’t Cry)
- Katha Pollitt – columnist (The Nation) and poet extraordinaire
- Adrienne Rich – American feminist, teacher, writer
- Ann Richards – first woman governor in Texas; delivered keynote address at 1988 Democratic National Convention
- Arundhati Roy – Indian novelist and activist
- Sappho – The ancient poet of epic stature, Plato’s tenth muse
- Vandana Shiva –physicist, ecofeminist, environmental activist, author; founded Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
- Patti Smith – Punk, meet feminism; poet, singer, activist
- Leslie Morgan Steiner – Journalist for The Washington Post, author of Mommy Wars and the blog On Balance
- Sonic Youth – Noise rock band
- Alma Thomas – first African American to receive a BA in the fine arts; first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art
- Helen Thomas – Lebanese American hardball liberal journalist, first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, the first woman member of the Gridiron Club
- Marina Tsvetaeva – prophetic Russian poet whose work addresses women’s sexuality and inner life
- Mary Wollstonecraft – British author, philosopher, early feminist; best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; mother of Mary Shelley
- Virginia Woolf – Novelist, essayist, publisher, critic, she helped us to rooms of our own
- Xena and Gabrielle – Oh yes. We love them.