6 Women Writers Who Most Influenced My Writing

1.     Daphne du Maurier: The Queen of the dark tale. It is little wonder so many of her short stories and novels have been adapted for the big screen, and by Hitchcock, no less. Anyone who ever read Rebecca is forever chasing that feeling of reading it for the first time. And if you’re a writer, chasing the need to write something that good. Try (novels) Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel; (short stories) The Birds, Don’t Look Now.

2.     Katherine Mansfield: The New Zealand short story writer renowned for her liberated personal life and tragic early demise, Mansfield’s modernist stories were some of the first to get beneath the skin of characters, deep into their psychology. The stories themselves, on the surface seemingly uneventful and every-day, are quietly devastating. In just a few pages, Mansfield drills down to some pure human truths. Often uncomfortable, always memorable. Try The Garden Party and Other Stories, Bliss.  

3.     Barbara Vine: I would read this woman’s shopping list if she’d written one. Barbara Vine is the alternative pen-name of the uber-prolific crime-writer Ruth Rendell. With Vine, the first sentence is perfectly crafted to lead to the next, the next, and the next, until you find you’re addictively turning those pages to get to the reveals. Less commercial and more profound than her Ruth Rendell incarnation, Vine often keeps you guessing, even after the last line. Try A Dark Adapted Eye, A Fatal Inversion.

4.     Shirley Jackson: My introduction to reading Jackson was through her novella We Have Always Lived in the Castle and her short stories, which were the perfect gateway into her longer novels. Jackson is many things: unsettling, intelligent, funny, moving (we are often invited into the life and head of an underdog), and feminist in a time before feminism. For a female writer, reading Jackson is like breathing a huge sigh of relief. Try (novella) We Have Always Lived in the Castle; (short stories) The Lottery and Other Stories.

5.     Patricia Highsmith: That premise of Strangers on a Train! Again, it is little wonder Hitchcock adapted the book for the screen. Highsmith can be bizarre and brutally disturbing, but always bold and engrossing. She dares to go there, to the inevitable in her plots and the darkest recesses of her characters' minds. We get to experience being in the psyche of a psychopath, or characters who are seriously a bit ‘off’. Try (novels) Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley (short stories) Under a Dark Angel's Eye

6.     Agatha Christie: Of course. So much part of my young life, I almost forgot to include her. Ingenious plot twists, vibrant settings, casts of memorable characters and, without doubt, two of the most iconic sleuths ever to grace print or screen, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, make Agatha Christie the absolute Queen of Crime. As yet, she is unsurpassed. Since first reading her as a child (and writing my first Christie pastiche in primary school) I have forever been seeking the elusive ‘thing that hasn’t been done yet’ in detective fiction. Try And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile, The Body in the Library, Murder on the Orient Express, Evil Under the Sun.

Lucy Kaufman is an author and playwright. Her ebook Don't Forget the Crazy is available here. Her novella The Heart-Shaped Box: Book One of Carousel of Curiosities is available as an ebook here; in paperback on Amazon, Waterstones and all good book stores; and audiobook on Audible, Spotify and other audio platforms. Her FREE short story Hotbed can be downloaded here.