Writers and literary biographies

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1891–1945) was a Polish lyric poet and playwright of the interwar Skamander group, born in Kraków and died in exile in Manchester, England.

María Raquel Adler

María Raquel Adler was an Argentine mystical poet of Jewish descent who converted to Catholicism, published about eleven collections, and was nominated for the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature.

María Rosa Oliver

María Rosa Oliver (1898–1977) was an Argentine essayist, short story writer, critic, and activist who co-founded the magazine Sur in 1931 and later led the world peace movement.

Maria Wine

Maria Wine, born Karla Petersen, was a Swedish poet and author born in Copenhagen in 1912. She debuted with Vinden ur mörkret (1943) and wrote over thirty books.

María Zambrano

María Zambrano (1904–1991) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist known for poetic reason, her method joining philosophy and poetry; exiled for 45 years, she won the 1988 Premio Cervantes.

Mariama Bâ

Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was a Senegalese novelist and feminist activist whose epistolary novel So Long a Letter (1979) won the Noma Award, followed by Scarlet Song in 1981.

Marian Keyes, Irish novelist born 1963, author of Watermelon, Rachel's Holiday, Anybody Out There?, and Grown Ups; comic women's fiction on addiction, depression, and domestic violence; British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022.

Mariana Enríquez

Mariana Enríquez, born in Buenos Aires in 1973, is an Argentine journalist and short-story writer whose gothic horror confronts the terror of the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship.

Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) was an American modernist poet known for precisely observed, quotation-rich poems on animals and art, and for acting editor of The Dial from 1925 to 1929.

Marianne Wiggins

Marianne Wiggins (born 1947, Lancaster, Pennsylvania) is an American novelist, author of John Dollar, Evidence of Things Unseen (National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist), The Shadow Catcher, and Properties of Thirst; former wife of Salman Rushdie.

Mariano Azuela

Mariano Azuela, born Mariano Azuela González, was a Mexican physician and novelist from Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, whose 1915 novel Los de abajo founded the novel of the Mexican Revolution.

Mariano José de Larra

Mariano José de Larra, who wrote under the pseudonym Fígaro, was a Spanish writer, journalist, and satirist (1809–1837), regarded as the leading Spanish journalist of the nineteenth century.

Mariano Melgar

Mariano Melgar, full name Mariano Lorenzo Melgar Valdivieso (1790–1815), was a Peruvian poet and independence fighter from Arequipa, creator of the mestizo yaraví and precursor of Romanticism in Hispanic American literature.

Mariano Picón Salas

Mariano Picón Salas (1901–1965) was a Venezuelan essayist, teacher, and diplomat, a major figure in the Latin American essay tradition who spent his formative years in Chile.

Marie de France

Marie de France, writing in Anglo-Norman French in the late 12th century, is regarded as the first woman to compose literary texts in French, best known for her twelve Lais.

Marie Luise Kaschnitz

Marie Luise Kaschnitz, née von Holzing-Berstett (1901–1974), was a German poet and writer of stories, radio plays, and diary prose who won the Georg-Büchner-Preis in 1955.

Marie Noël

Marie Noël was the pen name of Marie Mélanie Rouget (1883–1967), a French poet of Auxerre known for Catholic lyric poetry rooted in popular song.

Marie Under

Marie Under (1883–1980) was an Estonian poet regarded as Estonia's greatest, a leader of the Siuru group who published 14 collections and fled to Sweden in 1944.

Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Marie Vieux-Chauvet (1916–1973) was a Haitian novelist and playwright whose trilogy Amour, colère et folie, a denunciation of the Duvalier dictatorship, was withdrawn from sale for decades.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) was an Austrian writer, the leading woman of letters of the Habsburg Empire, whose masterpiece 'Das Gemeindekind' (1887) is a landmark of German-language realism.

Marie-Célie Agnant

Marie-Célie Agnant is a Haitian-born Quebec writer, living in Canada since 1970, known for novels like Le Livre d'Emma and for winning the 2017 Prix Alain-Grandbois.

Marie-Léontine Tsibinda

Marie-Léontine Tsibinda, full name Marie-Léontine Tsibinda Bilombo, is a Congolese poet, short-story writer, and playwright born in 1958, regarded as the first woman writer of Congo-Brazzaville.

Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier

Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier (1823–1908) was a French classical scholar who taught Latin literature at the Collège de France for 45 years and served as secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie française.

Marie-Thérèse Humbert

Marie-Thérèse Humbert is a Mauritian novelist writing in French whose work explores race, class, and mixed-race identity, best known for À l'autre bout de moi (1979).

Marieluise Fleißer

Marieluise Fleißer (1901–1974) was a German writer and dramatist whose plays and prose about her Bavarian home city of Ingolstadt made her a leading Weimar-era author.

Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson (born 1943, Sandpoint, Idaho) is an American novelist and essayist, author of Housekeeping (1980) and the Gilead trilogy: Gilead (2005 Pulitzer Prize), Home (2009 Orange Prize), and Lila (2014).

Marina Colasanti

Marina Colasanti (1937–2025) was an Italian-Brazilian writer, journalist, illustrator and translator, born in Asmara, who settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1948 and became one of Brazil's most awarded authors.

Marina Tsvetaeva (Марина Ивановна Цветаева)

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (Марина Ивановна Цветаева, 1892–1941), Russian Silver Age poet and prose writer, author of After Russia, Poema kontsa and Krysolov; suicide in Yelabuga 1941, Soviet rehabilitation from 1961.

Marina Warner

Marina Warner, born in 1946, is a British novelist, historian, and mythographer known for her studies of myth, feminism, and fairy tales, including Alone of All Her Sex.