First Author Photographs of Famous Writers

Flavorwire compiles a list of their favourite dust jacket photographs

Emily Temple (Flavorwire): 'Authors have to be pretty careful about the photos they choose to have on their dust jackets. Not only is it remarkably easy to fall prey to one of those pesky author photo clichés, but those first baby-faced pictures that grace debut novels might just go down in history — if they’re lucky. To that end, we scoured the web to pull together a few surprising, intense, and charmingly youthful author photos from some of our very favorite authors’ first works' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Faber & Faber Writers' Gallery
• Portraits of Beckett as a Famous Writer
• Gordon Ball: Beat Generation Photographs
• Burroughs 23: Charles Gatewood's Photographs of William S. Burroughs
• Writers: Philip Roth

10 Most Powerful Women Authors

Oates, Angelou and Walker among the most influential names in literature

Joyce Carol Oates

Writing in Forbes, Avril David has compiled a top ten list of the most powerful women authors alive: 'The women selected for this list are powerful because of their ability to influence us through their words and ideas [...] not to mention, book sales of up to 800M copies sold and a wealth of prestigious awards and recognition including Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes' (link via Poisoned Kiss):

• J.K. Rowling
• Danielle Steele
• Toni Morrison
• Stephenie Meyer
• Mary Higgins Clark
• Maya Angelou
• Alice Walker
• Jhumpa Lahiri
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Isabel Allende

Source: Avril David, 'The 10 Most Powerful Women Authors', Forbes, 6 June 2011