International Women's Day: Inspiring Women

As part of International Women’s Day, we’ve asked a handful of our female authors to describe the woman who has inspired them the most. Take a look at their responses.

Jo Platt, author of You Are Loved

Which female has inspired your life the most?  was a question which initially threw me into a mild panic.  The list of women whom I have to date found inspirational as mothers, professionals, political campaigners, pioneers and survivors of adversity, is pretty long to say the least.

However, having reeled myself in, calmed myself down, and focused on that all important ‘most’ component of the question, the answer became clear.  My most constant and most profound source of inspiration is Sharon Isabel Marshall: my sister.

It helps that she is three years older, and seemingly several lifetimes wiser, than me. From my earliest childhood, if there was a challenge to be faced, I benefited not only from her dubious elder child privilege of having faced it first, but also from her eagerness to make things easier for me than they had been for her. And it was her particular gift, and still is, to support, motivate and inspire without reference to her own successes and achievements, which are many. For almost fifty years, she has been a sounding board, a counsellor and, most importantly, an unassuming, and often unconscious, role model regarding everything from fashion to feminism, from fitness to family. And now that I am an author, her resilience, kindness, friendship and optimism inspire and weave their way through every novel I write.

Erica Brown, author East of India and the Strong family saga series

I fully admit to being one of those kids who didn’t pay attention. If the subject didn’t grab my imagination, my imagination grabbed me and inattention earned me a rap across the knuckles.

I hated it when the teacher reread yet again chapter three of The Grey Goose of Kilnevin. I didn’t need her to read it again. Bored with repetition, I was making up my own version of where it should go next. That earned me another rap across the knuckles for inattention.

Then along came the first lighthouse in my life; Miss Walters; short and blonde she had trimmed her pink and white spotted umbrella with yellow lace. Arty and creative, she saw something in me that the more traditional teachers who’d been teaching for years did not.

With her encouragement, I wrote the script for the school play – adapted from The Grey Goose of Kilnevin. There was also a scene where somebody on a train creates a likeness of another passenger from an apple; I did that too. Writing and drawing were definitely my thing.

Miss Walters left and things returned to where they’d been before – until Miss Smith.

She taught English and art. She also had two huge art rooms, her own kiln, and, best of all, the English she taught included what we would now call creative writing. I was in my element. I had reached the best time of my life – in school at least.

Being creative is something that was always in me and I think difficult for educationalists to recognise or address as part of a normal school syllabus. For the most part, I found my school days dull – except for these two – Miss Walters and Miss Smith – lighthouses that lit the way for my creativity.

Darcie Boleyn, author of Love at the Italian Lake and the upcoming Forever at Conwenna Cove**

When I was asked to write about the woman who has inspired me the most, my first thought was How can I choose?

I thought of friends, fellow writers, bloggers, editors and former colleagues, and ended up totally confused. So many women have inspired me over the years that selecting just one is incredibly difficult.

Therefore, I decided to start with my first female role model, the woman I have always aspired to emulate. My granny.

Granny was tiny, not even five foot tall, and weighed less than seven stone, but what she lacked in stature she made up for in personality. She was a primary school teacher who specialised in music and maths, and during her career became a deputy headteacher. She worked hard to become a teacher, never dreaming of being anything else, and because she loved her job so much, she didn’t marry and have children until she was in her late thirties. She had drive and vision and wanted to inspire every child she taught.

I didn’t arrive until she was in her late sixties, and by that time she was retired and had plenty of time to spend with me. Granny read to me and told me stories all the time. She developed my love of fictional worlds and recited the Greek myths and legends by heart. She summarised Shakespeare’s plays and created new stories about Oberon and Titania, Romeo and Juliet. Ours was a constant dialogue about fairies and goblins, love and hate, about why the sky was blue and why knowing the difference between homophones was so important. She also taught me to crochet, to make toffee and how to ignore the housework. On Saturday afternoons, Granny made toasted jam sandwiches that I ate with my bedridden granddad while we watched the horseracing. The times I spent with my granny were magical and filled with learning and love, and I treasure the memories.

Granny was my first female inspiration and to this day, I can still hear her voice and smell her Yardley’s lavender perfume. She was intelligent, funny and talented with a wicked sense of humour. She was a loving mother and grandmother. She was strong and independent, brave and compassionate.

When the going got tough, Granny would remind me: Sometimes you have to pin your knickers to your vest and go out and face the world. (This started with an incidence where knicker elastic had actually failed her, but became an analogy.) And with life’s ups and downs, I have learnt that she was right.

A. L. Michael, author of Cocktails and Dreams and Prosecco and Promises

There are endless women who have inspired me along the way - women who talk about body positivity and self-love. Women who are entrepreneurs and dreamers and are fighting every damn day for equality. Women who make me laugh, and use their platform for good. It’s hard to pick just one, but if I had to, I’d pick someone a little closer to home.

My mother is an extraordinary woman, for reasons both normal and surprising. She’s an amazing artist, she’s always there to help a person in need, and she’s funny as hell. She works with deaf children, and her house parties are always sublime. But beyond that, she has always been brave. My mum has a rare degenerative muscle disease. On good days, it means she’s low in energy, has trouble with double vision, and aches all over. Basically, her body can’t make energy from food. The bad days are, quite obviously, worse.

When she was diagnosed, she was told she’d be in a wheelchair by eighteen. Her response? We’ll see. She was told she’d never have children. Her response? We’ll see. She has had all sorts of horrible procedures, including electroshock therapy, when they were trying to diagnose her. And she has dealt with it all with this strange otherness, this acceptance that bad things happen, and you get on with them and live the best life you can.

It has always been my goal to be Wonder Woman - to be someone strong, who helps others, who achieves their dreams with bravery and kindness, and that’s because I was raised by someone like that. When you can’t be sure of the future, you make the present as fucking brilliant as it can be, you travel and live and laugh and make memories. Kindness is often overlooked, it can be seen as weak, but kindness in the face of pain and difficulty on the road ahead is just pure magic.

Rachel Lynch, author of Dark Game

Inspiration comes in many different forms and I could easily choose my Grandmother, my mother, or my daughter, for what they’ve taught me. Equally, I could choose a politician or a historical figure who is honoured and remembered on library shelves all over the world. I’ve chosen neither, because I believe that for a person to leave a mark that is so great and awe inspiring that their name jumps out when asked an enormous question like this; it all depends on circumstance. The woman I choose came into my life when I was only just discovering it. She is my choice because, no matter what life threw her way, she got back up, dusted herself off, and chased her dream anyway. No hardship or adversity could keep her quiet. She fought for what she believed in and she wrote about it. She wrote one of the most inspiring poems I think I’ve ever read, and she was integral to one of the most important civil rights movements of the twentieth century. She is the embodiment of the phrase, ‘bloom where you are planted’, and I lost myself in her work in my twenties. She never, ever gave up on her dreams, and she was living proof that absolutely nothing- whether you are a woman or not- can stand in your way. My choice is Maya Angelou RIP 1928-2014. Read her poem ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ and it will never leave you, I promise.

Which female has inspired your life the most? Tweet us at @canelo_co or via our Facebook or Instagram page.