54 Italian women novelists

Cristina Acidini is an Italian author and art historian. Her name also appears as Cristina Acidini Luchinat. She is the former Superintendent of Museum and Artistic Heritage State Board for the Florence area from 1991 to 1999.

Milena Agus is an Italian author from Sardinia. She is one of the leading novelists in the so-called Sardinian Literary Spring which began in the 1980s and which includes other international names such as Michela Murgia.

Aminata Aidara is an Italian-Senegalese journalist, short story writer and novelist.

Barbara Alberti is an Italian writer, journalist and screenwriter.

Sibilla Aleramo was an Italian feminist writer and poet best known for her autobiographical depictions of life as a woman in late 19th century Italy.

Gabriella Ambrosio is an Italian writer, journalist, academic, and advertising creative director. Her essays Siamo Quel che Diciamo and Le Nuove Terre della Pubblicita are required advertising texts in several universities in Italy. Her first novel, Prima di Lasciarsi, related to a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, has been translated into several languages including Hebrew and Arabic.

Silvia Ballestra is an Italian writer. In 2006 she won the Rapallo Carige Prize.

Anna Banti was an Italian writer, art historian, critic, and translator.

Barbara Baraldi is an Italian mystery and fantasy writer.

Paola Barbato is an Italian writer of comics and novels. She is part of the writing staff of the Italian comic book Dylan Dog, published by Sergio Bonelli Editore.

Marguerite Gilbert Caetani, Princess of Bassiano, Duchess of Sermoneta, was an American-born publisher, journalist, art collector, and patron of the arts. She married an Italian aristocrat and became the founder and director of the literary journals Commerce (fr) and Botteghe Oscure.

Alba de Céspedes y Bertini was a Cuban-Italian writer.

Cristina Comencini is an Italian film director, screenwriter and novelist.

Maria Corti was an Italian philologist, literary critic, and novelist. Considered one of the leading literary scholars of post-World War II Italy, she was awarded numerous prizes including the Premio Campiello for the entire body of her work. Her works of fiction were informed by her literary scholarship but also had a distinctly autobiographical vein, particularly her Voci del nord-est (1986) and II canto delle sirene (1989). For most of her career she was based at the University of Pavia where she established the Fondo Manoscritti di Autori Moderni e Contemporanei, an extensive curated archive of material on modern Italian writers.

Valentina D'Urbano is an Italian writer and illustrator. She was the recipient of the Rapallo Carige Prize for Quella vita che ci manca in 2015.

Caterina Davinio is an Italian poet, novelist and new media artist. She is the author of works of digital art, net.art, video art and was the creator of Italian Net-poetry in 1998.

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda, also known in Sardinian language as Gràssia or Gràtzia Deledda, was an Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general". She was the first Italian woman to receive the prize, and only the second woman in general after Selma Lagerlöf was awarded hers in 1909.

Viola Di Grado is an Italian writer. With her first novel 70% Acrylic 30% Wool, published when she was 23 years old, she became the youngest winner of the Premio Campiello Opera Prima and the youngest finalist for the Premio Strega.

Paola Drigo was an Italian writer of short stories, novellas, and novels. Her first collection of short stories, La fortuna, was published in 1913 and caught the attention of literary critics and the public. Her last major works were two novels, Fine d'anno and Maria Zef, both published in 1936. With a style rooted in 19th century Italian realism, she was admired for the detailed psychological analysis of her characters and her descriptions of provincial life in her native Veneto region. The protagonists of her stories were people of humble origin or those who had been "humiliated by fate".

Francesca Duranti is an Italian writer.

Maria Luisa Gabriella Epifani, better known as Muzi Epifani, was an Italian writer and poet.

Luce d’Eramo was an Italian writer and literary critic. She is best known for her autobiographical novel Deviazione, which recounts her experiences in Germany during World War II. D’Eramo’s writings are characterized by interest toward controversial subjects and a search of solutions that would liberate people from physical and mental constraints.

Oriana Fallaci was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her "long, aggressive and revealing interviews" with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Biancamaria Frabotta is an Italian writer. She has promoted the study of women writers in Italy. and her early poetry focused on feminist issues. The main themes of her later works are melancholy, the dichotomy between Nature and History and between Action and Contemplation, the relationship between the body and the self, and conjugal love. Besides essays on feminism and academic works on poets such as Giorgio Caproni, Franco Fortini, Amelia Rosselli, she has written plays, radio-dramas, a television show on Petrarch and a novel. She teaches Modern Italian Literature at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she got her Laurea degree.

Chiara Gamberale is an Italian writer, television and radio presenter.

Alessia Gazzola is an Italian novelist.

Natalia Ginzburg, was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States.

Cinzia Giorgio is an Italian writer.

Simonetta Agnello Hornby is an Italian novelist and food writer. Her novels are international bestsellers, translated in more than twenty languages.

Marzia Kjellberg is an Italian Internet personality, fashion designer, businesswoman, and one-time author. Known for her videos on her now-inactive YouTube channel, Marzia has also ventured into writing, fashion designing, and business. She is married to Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie.

Gina Lagorio was an Italian writer. She was the recipient of the Rapallo Carige Prize for II golfo del paradiso in 1987.

Gianna Manzini was an Italian writer whose Ritratto in piedi won her the Premio Campiello in 1971. It is a semi-autobiographical portrait of her father, an Italian anarchist. After several banishments for his political activities, her anarchist father was exiled to the small hilltop town of Cutigliano in 1921, 25 km northwest of Pistoia, where he would die of a heart attack in 1925 after being chased by fascist hoodlums.

Dacia Maraini is an Italian writer. Maraini's work focuses on women’s issues, and she has written numerous plays and novels. She has won awards for her work, including the Formentor Prize for L'età del malessere (1963); the Premio Fregene for Isolina (1985); the Premio Campiello and Book of the Year Award for La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990); and the Premio Strega for Buio (1999). In 2013, Irish Braschi's biographical documentary I Was Born Travelling told the story of her life, focusing in particular on her imprisonment in a concentration camp in Japan during World War II and the journeys she made around the world with her partner Alberto Moravia and close friends Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas.

Francesca Marciano is an Italian writer and actress. She was the recipient of the Rapallo Carige Prize for Casa Rossa in 2003.

Lorenza Mazzetti was an Italian film director, novelist, photographer and painter.

Melania Gaia Mazzucco is an Italian author.

Francesca Melandri is an Italian novelist, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. She was the recipient of the Rapallo Carige Prize for Più alto del mare in 2012.

Beatrice Monroy is an Italian writer and dramatist.

Elsa Morante was an Italian novelist, poet, translator and children's books author. Her novel La storia (History) is included in the Bokklubben World Library List of 100 Best Books of All Time.

Marta Morazzoni is an Italian educator and writer.

Lisa Morpurgo Dordoni was a writer and astrologer.

Michela Murgia is an Italian novelist. She is a winner of the Premio Campiello and the Mondello International Literary Prize.

Valeria Parrella is an Italian author, playwright and activist.

Ben Pastor, pseudonym of Maria Verbena Volpi, is an author born in Rome. She has Italian and US citizenship.

Fabrizia Ramondino (1936–2008) was an Italian author who has many works "which includes and crosses the boundaries between poetry, novels, plays, travelogues, memoirs, confession, self-reflection, anthropological, cultural and linguistic comment" according to Adalgisa Giorgio, who has conducted research of Ramondino's life and works.

Graziella "Lalla" Romano was an Italian novelist, poet, artist and journalist.

Gaia Cecilia M. Servadio(born 1938) is an Italian writer.

Susanna Tamaro is an Italian novelist. She has also worked as a scientific documentarist and movie maker direction assistant.

Maria Valentina Tonelli was an Italian pharmacist, essayist and editor.

Maria Antonietta Torriani was an Italian journalist and fiction writer. Much of her work was published under the pen name Marchesa Colombi, a character in the comedy La satira e Parini by Paolo Ferrari.

Licia Troisi is an Italian fantasy writer.

Grazia Verasani is an Italian writer and singer-songwriter. The author of novels, plays, and screenplays she is a musician who composes, performs, and records.

Simona Vinci is an Italian writer.

Annie Vivanti Chartres, also known as Anita Vivanti or Anita Vivanti Chartres, was a British-born Italian writer.