#FEBRUARYSHEWROTE - CELEBRATING AUTHORS USING THE PRONOUNS SHE/HER

Good day everyone! Hope 2022 is off to a wonderful start for you, and welcome to my second blog post of the year!

I have chosen for the month of February to read and review exclusively authors using the pronouns she/her.

The simple hashtag for the effort to highlight such authors in February is widely known as #FebruarySheWrote, and I am honoured to participate in #FebruarySheWrote this year!

I am a firm believer in amplifying voices always, and women authors can and should be celebrated throughout the entire year. Still, I do feel we require benchmark days, even months, to remind ourselves of the importance of things such as the amazing female writers we enjoy in literature.

Such days of celebration, including official holidays and designated months, such as Women’s History Month (observed in March in the United States, October in Canada, for example) have been hard fought for. The activists who have made enormous sacrifices, over the years, who insisted, persisted, and resisted attempts for such voices not to be properly heard, have been instrumental in ensuring such special benchmarks exist.

So let’s also celebrate Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Mala Yousafzai, Sojourner Truth, Alice Walker, Betty Ford, Huda Sha’arawi, and those like them, who stood for women’s rights. Because women like the ones I have just mentioned, strove so that women like Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, George Eliot, and the uncountable brilliant female writers down through the ages would have the recognition they so richly deserve.

Thus, when we acknowledge and participate in such days of celebration, official holidays, and designated months, we not only pay homage to those incredible people we wish to celebrate, but also honour those valiant reformers and advocates who struggled to ensure the celebrations could occur.

Co-incidentally, many of those activists I listed above, were authors themselves. For the written word will always be a weapon in the fight for equality, justice, and amplifying voices of those deserving to be heard.

I encourage everyone to participate in #FebruarySheWrote, in whatever way you see fit. For me, since I predominantly read science fiction and fantasy, I have selected the following ten sci-fi / fantasy books to read this month, and I am so excited, as these promise to be incredible reads! Please see the Goodreads links accompanying the list, check them out, and learn more about the amazing authors who wrote them!

Lady Hotspur by Tessa Gratton (Goodreads link)

Oraiáphon by Marian L. Thorpe (Goodreads link)

To Ride Hell’s Chasm by Janny Wurts (Goodreads link)

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Goodreads link)

The Younglings by Helena M. Craggs (Goodreads link)

Dragon Mage by M.L. Spencer  (Goodreads link)

The Calling by Branwen Oshea (Goodreads link)

Seraphina’s Lament by Sarah Chorn (Goodreads link)

The Thirteenth Hour by Trudie Skies (Goodreads link)

Sairō’s Claw by Virginia McClain (Goodreads link)
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Please feel free to comment on this and future blogs and I will be sure to get back to you. Chat soon!