Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

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Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Literature,

#1601

Cecilia Woloch

#94971

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Cecilia Woloch is an American poet, writer and teacher, known for her work in communities throughout the U.S. and around the world. She is a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship recipient and the author of six collections of poems, a novel, and numerous essays.

#1602

Pearl London

#118627

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Pearl London was an American supporter of literary arts and teacher of poetry in New York City. Early life Born Pearl Levison on April 23, 1916, London was the daughter of Joshua Jacob Levison and Ray Levison. Her father was a renowned landscape architect on Long Island and her mother was an emigrant from Latvia. London had two sisters, Sylvia and Beatrice.

#1603

Susan McLean

#144760

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Susan McLean is an American poet, a translator of poetry, and a retired professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. She graduated from Harvard University with a BA in English in 1975 and from Rutgers University with a PhD in 1990. Her work has appeared in Kalliope, Atlanta Review, The Formalist, Iambs and Trochees, Arion, Measure, The Classical Outlook, Literary Imagination. She writes in the field of formalism. According to an interview with the Poetry Foundation, she describes her love of formalism as: " I am addicted to the esoteric pleasures of rhyme and meter, and I don’t even try to deny it or camouflage it with slant rhyme".

#1604

Bora Chung

#110830

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Bora Chung is a South Korean writer and translator. Her collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Life and career Bora Chung was born in 1976, in Seoul. Her parents were dentists. She completed graduate studies in Russian and East European area studies at Yale University, then went on to gain a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She taught the Russian language, literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University. She is a social activist.

#1605

Jean McNeil

#139772

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Jean McNeil, born 1968, is a Canadian fiction and travel author. She is a Reader in Creative Writing and co-convenor of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She grew up on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. She presently lives in London, England.

#1606

Mary McHenry

#98757

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Mary Williamson McHenry was "credited with bringing African-American literature to Mount Holyoke College," where she was Emeritus Professor of English. McHenry also introduced her then student, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, to Five Colleges faculty member James Baldwin during the 1980s. Parks would later credit McHenry with her success.

#1607

Ifeoma Okoye

#82959

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Ifeoma Okoye is a Nigerian novelist. She has been referred to by fans as "the most important female novelist from Nigeria after Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta," according to Oyekan Owomoyela. She was born in Anambra State in Eastern Region, Nigeria. She went to school at St. Monica's College in Ogbunike to receive a teaching certificate in 1959. She then graduated from the University of Nigeria in Nsukka to earn a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in English in 1977. She wrote novels including Behind the Clouds, children's novels and short stories, such as The Village Boy and Eme Goes to Scho...

#1608

Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander

#101118

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018. Previously, Alexander was a professor for 15 years at Yale University, where she taught poetry and chaired the African American studies department. In 2015, she was appointed director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation. She then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2016, as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. In 2022, Time named Alexander one of...

#1609

Jeanne Murray Walker

#118282

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jeanne Murray Walker is an American poet and playwright. Life Jeanne Murray was born on May 27, 1944, in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, the daughter of John Gerald and Erna Murray. In 1965, she won the Atlantic Monthly Award for both fiction and Poetry and was named the Atlantic Monthly Scholar at Bread Loaf School of English. She graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois with a B.A. in English in 1966. In 1969 she received an M.A. from Loyola University, and in 1974, she was granted a Ph.D. in English from The University of Pennsylvania.

#1610

Gillian Lynne

#50831

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Dame Gillian Barbara Lynne was an English ballerina, dancer, choreographer, actress, and theatre-television director, noted for her theatre choreography associated with two of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. At age 87, she was made a DBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List.

#1611

Airea D. Matthews

#110419

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Airea D. Matthews is an American poet. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and the co-director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College. She was named the 2022–23 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia.

#1612

Angharad Price

#106963

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Angharad Price FLSW is a Welsh academic and novelist. She is a recipient of the Glyndŵr Award. Biography Price was born in Bethel, Gwynedd, Wales, the daughter of the Welsh historian . She graduated with a BA and DPhil in Modern Languages from Jesus College, Oxford. She teaches at Bangor University and works on Welsh prose of the modern era. She currently lives in Caernarfon.

#1613

Josephine Wilson

#112899

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Josephine Wilson is an Australian writer and academic based in Perth, Western Australia. Biography Wilson was born in Lincolnshire, England, and came to live in Australia with her family at the age of six. She has a Masters of Philosophy from the University of Queensland and a PhD from University of Western Australia .

#1614

Ruth Ellen Kocher

Ruth Ellen Kocher

#131082

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Ruth Ellen Kocher is an American poet. She is the recipient of the PEN/Open Book Award, the Dorset Prize, the Green Rose Prize, and the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Cave Canem. She is Professor of English at the University of Colorado - Boulder where and serves as Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and Divisional Dean for Arts and Humanities.

#1615

Pamela Uschuk

#122877

Overall Influence

Pamela Uschuk is an American poet, and 2011 Visiting Poet at University of Tennessee. She won a 2010 American Book Award, for Crazy Love: New Poems. Life Born in 1953 and raised on a farm in Michigan, she received her B.A. In English from Central Michigan University. She graduated from the University of Montana with a MFA in Poetry and Fiction.

#1616

Fanny Carrión de Fierro

#102400

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Fanny Carrión de Fierro is an Ecuadorian poet, literary critic, essayist and university professor. Life and career She received a Doctorate in Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador , as well as a Master of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Bachelor's degree in Education from the Central University of Ecuador.

#1617

Susan Miller

#87871

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Susan Miller, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, is perhaps best known as the author/performer of the critically acclaimed one woman play, My Left Breast and as Executive Producer and writer for the award-winning web series Anyone But Me. For her work on the web series she won the first Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Original New Media.

#1618

Carol Burnett

#74836

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Carol Creighton Burnett is an American comedian, actress, and singer. Her groundbreaking comedy-variety show The Carol Burnett Show, which originally aired on CBS, was one of the first to be hosted by a woman. She has performed onstage, on television, and in film in varying genres, including dramatic and comedic roles. She has received numerous accolades, including six Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and seven Golden Globe Awards. Burnett was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2013, and the Screen Actors Guild Lif...

#1619

Yolanda Wisher

#112565

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Yolanda Wisher is an American poet, educator and spoken word artist who focuses on the experience of being African-American. She is a graduate of Temple University and was selected as the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016.

#1620

Catherine Petroski

#84177

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Catherine Petroski , born Catherine Groom in St. Louis, Missouri, is an American writer and photographer. Life She holds degrees from MacMurray College and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught writing and literature at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and aboard ships at sea. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Authors Guild, and SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research.

#1621

Myra Sklarew

#90751

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Myra Weisberg Sklarew is an American biologist, poet and teacher. Life She received a biology degree from Tufts University, in 1956. She studied bacterial genetics and bacterial viruses with Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She later studied with Elliott Coleman at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, where she received an M.A. in 1970. She has worked in the Department of Neurophysiology, at Yale University School of Medicine, where she studied frontal lobe function and delayed response memory in Rhesus monkeys.

#1622

Catherine Tufariello

#99349

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Catherine Tufariello is an American poet and former professor at Cornell University, the College of Charleston, and the University of Miami. Biography She graduated from University at Buffalo, and Cornell University with a PhD.

#1623

Folake Onayemi

#51496

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Folake Oritsegbubemi Onayemi is Professor of Classics and Head of the Department of Classics at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. She was the first woman to be awarded a PhD in Classics in Nigeria and the first black woman to be Professor of Classics in sub-Saharan Africa. She is an expert on comparative Greco-Roman and Nigerian literature, cultures, and mythology, particularly relating to the roles and representations of women.

#1624

Janice N. Harrington

#98241

Overall Influence

Janice N. Harrington is an American storyteller, poet, and children's writer. Life She grew up in Vernon, Alabama. Her family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to escape racial segregation when she was eight. She now lives in Illinois.

#1625

Niaz Zaman

#80793

Overall Influence

Niaz Zaman is a Bangladeshi translator and a supernumerary professor at the University of Dhaka. She was awarded 2016 Bangla Academy Literary Award in the translation category. Education and career Zaman completed her I.A. and B.A. from Holy Cross College and M.A. from the University of Dhaka. She joined Dhaka University as a lecturer of English in 1972. She founded her publishing house writers.ink in 2005. Zaman was affiliated to the Bangladesh Embassy in Washington, D.C. as Educational Attaché for around three years.

#1626

Zinovia Dushkova

#54402

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Zinovia Vasilievna Dushkova is a Russian author, poet, philosopher, and historian. Dushkova has written approximately 60 books which have been published in both Russia and Ukraine and translated into seven languages. Dushkova's philosophy is influenced by Blavatsky's Theosophy.

#1627

Minnie Pearl

#59068

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon , known professionally as her stage character Minnie Pearl, was an American comedian who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years and on the television show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1991.

#1628

Sandra Lim

#130728

Overall Influence

Sandra Lim is a Korean American poet and professor. Career She is the author of three poetry collections -- The Curious Thing , The Wilderness , and Loveliest Grotesque . The Wilderness was the winner of the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize and the Levis Reading Prize. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, and The New Republic. Her poems and essays have been anthologized in Atlantic Currents , Counterclaims , The Poem’s Country , and The Echoing Green , among others. She serves on the editorial board of Poetr...

#1629

Sheila Murnaghan

#119336

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Sheila Murnaghan is the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek at the University of Pennsylvania. She is particularly known for her work on Greek epic, tragedy, and historiography. Career Murnaghan gained her AB in Classics from Harvard University in 1973 followed by a BA from Cambridge University in 1975 and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980. Murnaghan taught at Yale University from 1979 until 1990 then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where she is now the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek.

#1630

Sue Welfare

#115704

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Susan Welfare is an English romantic fiction writer who also writes under the pseudonyms Kate Lawson and Gemma Fox. She is also the creator of BBC Radio Norfolk's first audio drama Little Bexham. She attended Downham Market Grammar School and has lived in Norfolk all her life.

#1631

Caroline Adderson

#107682

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Caroline Adderson is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. She has published four novels, two short story collections and two books for young readers. Biography Adderson was born on September 9, 1963, in Edmonton, Alberta to James Neil and Bernice Adderson.

#1632

Ekaterina Velmezova

#52940

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Ekaterina Valeryevna Velmezova is a Russian and Swiss philologist, professor of Slavistics and of history and epistemology of language sciences in Eastern Europe at the University of Lausanne, whose principal works concern Russian and Czech ethnolinguistics, as well as history and epistemology of language sciences in Central and Eastern Europe.

#1633

Lisa Russ Spaar

#116550

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Lisa Russ Spaar is a contemporary American poet, professor, and essayist. She is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia and the director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Rough: Poems and Cash: Poems. Her latest collection, Orexia, was published by Persea Books in 2017. Her poem, Gaudete, published in IMAGE Journal, won a 2016 Pushcart Prize.

#1634

Lacy M. Johnson

#126530

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Lacy M. Johnson is an American writer, professor and activist. She is the author of Trespasses: A Memoir , The Other Side: A Memoir and The Reckonings: Essays . Early life and education Johnson was born in Iowa. She grew up in rural Missouri, in a town called Macon, Missouri, which was featured in her 2012 book, Trespasses: A Memoir.

#1635

Sue Ann Alderson

#115804

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Sue Ann Alderson , an American children's novelist. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Ohio State University in 1962 and a Master of Arts in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. Alderson moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1967, where she taught at Simon Fraser University. She also was a professor in the Creative Writing Department at the University of British Columbia.

#1636

Lana Lopesi

#96601

Overall Influence

1992 - Present (32 years)

Alana Marissa Lopesi is a writer and critic based in Auckland, New Zealand. She has been published in multiple places in New Zealand and Australia, and has been an editor in chief at The Pantograph Punch. Her recent book Bloody Women is a series of essays which describes her experiences as a Samoan woman living in New Zealand.

#1637

Katharine Coles

#103823

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Katharine Coles is an American poet and educator. She served from 2006 to 2012 as Utah's third poet laureate and currently serves as the inaugural director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute and the co-director of the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature.

#1638

Nadia Nurhussein

#96598

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Nadia Nurhussein is an American academic and author specialized in African-American literature, culture, and poetics. She is an associate professor of English and Africana studies at the Johns Hopkins Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

#1639

Kathleen Nott

#58378

Overall Influence

1905 - 1999 (94 years)

Kathleen Cecilia Nott FRSL was a British poet, novelist, critic, philosopher and editor. Life Kathleen Nott was born in Camberwell, London. Her father, Philip, was a lithographic printer, and her mother, Ellen, ran a boarding house in Brixton; Kathleen was their third daughter. She was educated at Mary Datchelor Girls' School, London, before attending King's College, London. She soon left King's College on an Open Exhibition scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford. The scholarship was in English Literature, but on arriving at Oxford, Nott switched to Philosophy, Politics and Economics in w...

#1640

Barbara Rosenthal

Barbara Rosenthal

#88813

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Barbara Ann Rosenthal is an American avant-garde artist, writer and performer. Rosenthal's existential themes have contributed to contemporary art and philosophy. Rosenthal's pseudonyms are "Homo Futurus," which was taken from the title of one of her books, and "Cassandra-on-the-Hudson," which alludes to "the dangerous world she envisions" while creating art in her studio and residence on the Hudson River in Greenwich Village, NYC. Rosenthal successfully trademarked "Homo Futurus" in 2022.

#1641

Stephanie Powell Watts

Stephanie Powell Watts

#30029

Overall Influence

Stephanie Powell Watts is an American author. She won a Whiting Award in 2013 and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence in 2012 for her book We are Taking Only what We Need a collection of 11 stories which chronicles the lives of African-Americans in North Carolina. Her short fiction has been included in two volumes of the Best New Stories from the South anthology and honored with a Pushcart Prize.

#1642

Leslie Ullman

#136974

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Leslie Ullman is an American poet and professor. She is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, Progress on the Subject of Immensity . Her third book, Slow Work Through Sand , was co-winner of the 1997 Iowa Poetry Prize. Other honors include winning the 1978 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for her first book, Natural Histories, and two NEA fellowships. Her poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Puerto Del Sol, Blue Mesa Review, and in anthologies including Five Missouri Poets .

#1643

Janet Bately

#72562

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Janet Bately is a British academic, the Sir Israel Gollancz Professor Emerita of English Language and Medieval Literature at King's College London since 1977. She has a bachelor's degree from Somerville College, Oxford and began her academic career as a lecturer at Birkbeck College. Her research interests include Old English and Middle English literatures, the court of King Alfred the Great, and early modern bilingual dictionaries.

#1644

Lisa Lowe

#98880

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies Yale University, and an affiliate faculty in the programs in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Prior to Yale, she taught at the University of California, San Diego, and Tufts University. She began as a scholar of French and comparative literature, and since then her work has focused on the cultural politics of colonialism, immigration, and globalization. She is known especially for scholarship on French, British, and United States colonialisms, Asian migration and Asian American studies, race and ...

#1645

Anna Chahoud

#97515

Overall Influence

Anna Chahoud is Professor of Latin in the Department of Classics at Trinity College Dublin, and is known for her research on Latin literature and linguistics. Education Anna Chahoud holds a BA in classics from the University of Bologna and a PhD in Greek and Latin philology from the University of Pisa .

#1646

Miriam N. Kotzin

Miriam N. Kotzin

#142071

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Miriam N. Kotzin is Professor of English at Drexel University, a poet and short-story writer, founding editor of Per Contra, a literary journal, and a contributing editor at Boulevard Magazine edited by Richard Burgin. Kotzin has published over 120 poems and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. She is also the author of over 50 short stories. She has published several volumes: three collections of poetry, Reclaiming the Dead , Weights and Measures , and Taking Stock ; and Just Desserts , a collection of short stories.

#1647

Nancy Snow

#53807

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Nancy E. Snow is a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics and the director of the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma. Prior to her move to Norman, she was a professor of philosophy at Marquette University. In 2022, she will move to the University of Kansas.

#1648

Linda Bierds

#55802

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Linda Louise Bierds is an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington, where she also received her B.A. in 1969. Her books include Flights of the Harvest Mare; The Stillness, the Dancing; Heart and Perimeter; and The Ghost Trio . Since 1984, her work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker. Her poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets and many other anthologies. She lives on Bainbridge Island.

#1649

Marie-Claire Bancquart

Marie-Claire Bancquart

#82529

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

Marie-Claire Bancquart was a French poet, essayist, professor emerita and literary critic. She was the recipient of the Grand prix de la Critique littéraire of the Académie Française, the premier authority on matters related to French language and culture, as well as numerous other awards. Her poetry is known for its visceral nature, often exploring the interior of the human body as a means of exploring emotion and humanity.

#1650

Dana Johnson

#132813

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Dana Johnson is an American writer and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. Honors include the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and being named a nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her writing has appeared in Callaloo, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.

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