Amazing Women Writers

Women have played, and continue to play, a remarkable role in literature and journalism:

• Enheduanna, a Sumerian writer and high priestess living in circa 2000 BC authored the first attributed literary effort in history.
• Lady Murasake Shikibu, a Japanese noblewoman (born 970; died 1004), wrote the earliest novel on record.  Her work is considered a masterpiece by many critics.

• Anne Bradstreet was the first published poet in American history.  She abandoned a life of nobility in England before 1644, to settle in Massachusetts with her husband.  Her poems were first published in 1650.
• Anna Katharine Green wrote the first American detective novel,The Leavenworth Case, in 1878. Alice Allison Dunnigan, in 1946, became the first African-American woman journalist to get White House credentials. Pauline Frederick was the first woman news reporter on TV; she covered the 1948 political conventions for ABC.