Nasty Women Writers 2025: The Year in Review

We are grateful for all the fabulous contributions we received this past year from readers who are committed to the project of amplifying women’s voices. 2025 had its challenges, but we power on and are thankful to have our readers and contributors with us. We wish all an inspiring and prosperous 2026. May every small act of giving, activism, and support for one another reverberate deeply in the world at large.

January 2025

Cristian Horgos contributed “Hilma af Klint’s Telescopic and Prophetic Vision” identifying similarities between af Klint’s abstract paintings and images taken of the large scale structure of the universe.

“The similarities I want to emphasize between paintings made by Hilma af Klint before 1915, and pictures that were made decades later, using modern telescopes, suggest that we are still far away from truly understanding af Klint’s work.”

Ottilee O’Malley gifted us with a fascinating piece on women’s contributions to Chinese Literature and Chinese Characters in “Nasty Characters: Chinese Literature Through the Lens of Feminism.”

“I began to study Chinese because I was vastly impressed by a mediocre translation of the poem “Encountering Sorrow” in the old Cyril Birch Anthology of Chinese Literature. This poem, a third century BCE shamanic tale of doomed homosexual love, in the form of a catalogue of flowers, was the most wondrous thing I’d ever read as a twelve-year-old girl in backward, rural Rhode Island.”

Theresa offered a post on “Elizabeth Keckly (1818-1907): Textile Artist, Author and Activist at the Time of the American Civil War.”

“Elizabeth Keckly (also spelled Keckley) is often referred to as “Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker” but she was so much more. Becoming a dressmaker to Mrs. Lincoln was something she aspired to and achieved. It’s what she did, not who she was. Who she was is a woman who achieved under the most challenging conditions, an activist and civil rights leader, a visionary, and an author. She wrote and published her memoir, Behind the Scenes or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, in 1868.”

Maria inspired us with “La Brigantessa: a Path of Resistance,” a post about Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli’s novel La Brigantessa, set in a place – Southern Italy – and a time – mid-19th century – ripe for such an illicit lifestyle.

Author Battigelli shares, “Although I was only three when my family immigrated to Canada, I have always felt a strong connection to my motherland and to my relatives in the south. In writing this novel, I wanted to honour the lives and sacrifices of my parents and ancestors, and the people of Camini and Calabria in particular.”

February 2025

Contributor Jamie Swann offered us “Anne Bradstreet: A Puritan with Feminist Sensibilities”

“Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) lived amidst the fervent exploration and unwavering Puritanism of the 17th century. Bradstreet’s desire to establish a community rooted in Puritan religious principles prompted her journey to settle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the Arabella. However, Bradstreet’s poetry unveils a delicate balance between her devout faith and her unease with the patriarchal norms of her era. While deeply entrenched in Calvinistic doctrine, Bradstreet quietly rebelled against the constraints imposed on women, creating a body of work that subtly but powerfully challenged Puritan norms.”

March 2025

Maria started off the month March with her post “Visibility Matters: Where are the Women?”

“Out of forty monuments along the National Mall in Washington, DC, none celebrate women and their contributions to American history. To change this, a foundation was established to officially lobby for an additional monument. The Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation was authorized by Congress in December 2020. The Foundation’s updated mission statement reads: “Build a transformative monument on the National Mall that fosters a deeper understanding of the women who shaped American democracy and inspire the continued pursuit of liberty and equality for all.” Their Vision reads: “A National Mall that permanently weaves women’s triumphs into the monumental fabric of the nation’s capital.”

Theresa posted two installments on English author George Eliot:

“Part 1: A giantess of English Literature” and “Part 2:’ The Slavery of Being a Girl’”

“When I decided to finally read George Eliot this year, my 62nd on this planet, I thought that I was late on arrival. Yet, while immersed in the third novel I chose to read of hers, Daniel Deronda, I decided I was reading them at the perfect age. The wisdom in her novels’ portrayal and discussion of humans and their lived lives inspired me to reflect on my own life in a way other books have not. Her brutal honesty encouraged me to look with brutal honesty at my biography as I had not dared before. This offered me permission to use an alternative lens to view myself and others in my life, one with more clarity and compassion. I may have missed this experience if I read the novels at a younger age. I may not have been able to meet them fully in my humanity.”

Ottilee O’Malley treated us to translations of ancient Chinese Poetry written by women in “These are Women. Hear them Roar.”

“In times when poetry is a primary entertainment medium, it provides the most vivid and authentic account of lived life, just as novels do for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Classic of Poetry is our best record of, and widest window on, earliest China. It is preponderantly a collection of folksongs. Further, the preponderance of these poems were evidently composed by women. The work songs, and particularly the songs that describe relationships, show an awareness of women’s feelings that one would hardly expect from a male writer from three thousand years ago.”

April 2025

Maria reviewed Sarah Lonsdale’s book, Wildly Different: How Five Women Reclaimed Nature in a Man’s World

“This book is about five of these women, whose lives spanned the last 150 years, and who, each in her own way, challenged centuries of myth, superstition and tradition for her place in nature,” says author Lonsdale. She adds, “Thus, the wild also represents freedom, if you are brave enough to take it, from human rules, many, as we know, drawn up through prejudice, fear or folly.”

Theresa uploaded “George Eliot (1819-1880) Part 3: The Brave Couples of Middlemarch.”

“George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch delves into the truth of marriage, what happens once the courting, the decision making and  anticipation of the wedding day are set aside and two people begin to share a home and a life. In Middlemarch, we are treated to an almost reality TV-like view of this strange and wildly popular human invention.”

In “Heather Pringle: Celebrating Viking Women—Warriors, Weavers and Wise Women,” Theresa moved on to the Vikings.

“What is most remarkable about Pringle’s book The Northwomen is that Pringle takes the time and care to include the story of the variety of ways women lived their lives in the Viking world. She does not only write about the “exceptional” women of the Vikings—the warriors and the sorceresses and Demigoddesses. She includes stories of women traders, ancestors, protectors, weavers, voyagers, and even the women the Vikings enslaved.”

May 2025

Harriet Boyd Hawes was the subject of Theresa’s first post in May, “Harriet Boyd Hawes (1871-1945): Forging the Way for Women in Archaeology”

“Harriet Boyd Hawes decided to become an archaeologist when women weren’t even allowed to run their own digs. But she did. She was drawn to Crete because of other digs uncovering the Bronze Age Minoan culture there. She went on to unearth the Minoan town of Gournia, leading the dig, and overseeing more than one hundred workers at a time.”

Maria enlightened us with “Italian Woman Writer Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991): ‘Love of Life Begets a Love of Life’,” where Ginzburg shares parental and life advice:

“Our relationship with our children should be a living exchange of thoughts and feelings, but it should also include deep areas of silence; it should be an intimate relationship but it must not violently intrude on their privacy; it should be a balance between silence and words…This is perhaps the one real chance we have of giving them some kind of help in their search for a vocation – to have a vocation ourselves, to know it, to love it and serve it passionately; because love of life begets a love of life.”

Theresa introduced us to “We Will be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo.”

“More important than an activist tome, more important than a cry for the Amazon Rainforest and acknowledgement of indigenous peoples’ right to their own land, more important than a scathing exposé on colonialist pillage, and predatory preachers, this book is the story of a woman growing up, a woman coming of age, a woman allowing us into her personal story and her unique worldview in her own voice. This book is a treasure primarily because of that. Because we finally get to hear the story from the point of view of a Waorani woman as she experienced it.”

June 2025

In “Joan Didion: The Absolute Emotional Risk that is Motherhood,” Theresa writes about her experience of reading Didion’s Blue Nights.

“Blue Nights is memories of her daughter, their sweet family of three, her process with adopting her, raising her, memories of her and the houses they lived in, beautifully captured moments of the daughter when she was young and older, together with the questions that only come when we look back, when we remember and wonder, when we contemplate, when we grieve.”

July 2025

Maria gave us the delightful post “Where are the Women? The Girl Scouts’ Campaign for the First Statue of Women in Central Park by Janice Hechter.”

“Janice Hechter, whose work “delves into themes of empowerment, resilience and the often-overlooked narratives of women in arts and society,” had also been informed about the lack of statues of real women. While researching the issue, she kept encountering articles about Girl Scout Troop 3484. Impressed by the young girls’ activism, Hechter, a children’s book writer and illustrator, decided to write about this troop and their inspiring and empowering experience.”

“California Painter Grace Hudson (1865-1937): Honoring the Pomo People” was posted by Theresa, highlighting Hudson’s paintings of the Pomo People.

“Grace Carpenter Hudson (1865-1937) was an American woman artist who excelled and became very popular in the field of oil paintings at at a time where women were generally unacknowledged in that discipline. Daughter of abolitionist parents, her father fighting in one battle with famed John Brown, they moved from Kansas to Potter Valley, California in covered wagon and were soon made aware of the local indigenous population there: people who have come to be called the Pomo Indians.”

August 2025 

Theresa wrote about painter Grace Hudson’s Grandmother in “Clarina Nichols (1810-1885): Tireless Fighter for Mothers and Women’s Rights.”

“Clarina Nichols fought for women’s rights her entire life, only to see many of those she did achieve reversed in her lifetime. Still Clarina Nichols made a huge impact on her surroundings and the people she knew, encountered, educated and inspired. She was a powerhouse and worked relentlessly on the subject today termed: domestic violence. At the same time as Stanton and Anthony, she joined the cause of the women’s movement and was one of the main speakers and leaders. More recently, and thanks in part to biographer Diane Eickhoff, Nichols is receiving her due”

Maria covered “Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing by Jen Soriano.”

“American individualism tells us that our wounds are our own and that we should hide them while dwelling in shame. Ableism tells us we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, walk off our wounds, and move on…But the Filipino notion of kapwa is an antidote to American individualism, ableism, and toxic self-blame. As Leny Mendoza Strobel writes, “Our collective memory may be wounded, but from this wound also comes a collective power to heal.”

September 2025

In the beginning of September we had a contribution by Enzie Riddle, “The Most Successful Pirate in History was a Woman.”

“This story begins more than 200 years ago with a woman named Shi Yang, who was born in Guangzhou, China around 1775 to a poverty-stricken family. It is suspected that Yang was of a boat dwelling people who mainly occupied Shanghai, Macau, and Hong Kong. Not much else is known about her childhood and early years– until she was forced into her life as a sex worker.”

Theresa posted “The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts by Tiya Miles.”

“Miles illuminates the intersection of enslaved black Africans, Cherokee and Creek, and white missionaries. The complexity of this story—these stories—and the fierce bravery required to continue is heartbreaking. Yet woven in is also connection and the desire to help one another under even the most brutal conditions.

The seeds of hope the women planted, both literal and figurative, live on in the lives of the three modern women.”

October 2025

Theresa contributed “Mary Sharratt’s Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen.”

“Sharratt’s Illuminations helped me understand the magnitude of what Hildegard von Bingen accomplished and her fighting spirit to do so. She was a warrior indeed. Sharratt writes about her struggles with the abbot of the Disibodenberg who doesn’t think a woman should be writing. She exposes the politics of the church at the time and the power plays, which Hildegard navigates with intelligence and strategy.”

And “Toni Morrison’s Powerful Network within the Web of Women Writers.”

“It would be impossible to list all the women in the web of women writers that Black woman writer Toni Morrison influenced and continues to influence and inspire. Her reach is vast and shows up in unique and individual strains. But it is important to recognize it and attempt to shed light on the deliberateness of what Morrison sought to do and what she achieved. Morrison birthed her own powerful network whose connections continue to grow and inform the entirety of the web.”

November 2025

A pause in our posts this month due to the passing of our beloved father, Victor Dintino. Theresa writes of his exceptionality in her Christmas post about writer Lucy Maud Montgomery’s short story “Aunt Cyrilla’s Christmas Basket”:

“Though being generous is a conscious effort for most, for these folks, it is who they are. They are fed by feeding others. The more they give, the more they have to give. The space they hold is enriched with the giving. As a result, most of them hold a large presence in their community.

My father was one such person. He loved to cook for people and feed them; he opened his door to everyone. He had time to listen and help. It was done naturally. He did not have to think about being generous, he just was. The more he gave, the more rarefied and cherished his presence became.”

Forever grateful for our father and all those who enrich our lives with their generosity.

December 2025

Theresa posted Part 1 of several posts about Canadian Author Lucy Maud Montgomery. A Canadian Nasty Woman Writer who deserves her due,  Montgomery will receive further articulation in 2026.

“In the early 1900s, Lucy Maud Montgomery created female characters who were independent, had minds of their own, and broke the barriers of expectations for women of the time. Her first novel, Anne of Green Gables, was published in 1908. At a time when women had very few career options outside the home, Anne is top of her class and goes to college. She is ambitious and steadfast in the pursuit of her goals. She understands that her biggest limitation is that she was “not born a boy.” Even so, she never lets that stop her.”

The year ahead

It will be interesting to see who and what is brought forward in 2026. We, Maria and Theresa, let ourselves be led to women who inspire us. It is an organic process we have come to love, and we hope our readers have, too.

©Maria and Theresa Dintino 2025