It's Friday, December 18th, and today is the day I hope that each of you will buy at least one book written by a woman as a holiday gift for yourself or for someone else!! Please? :)

Yesterday I posted Part One of my guide; organized as a big huge THANK YOU to all the women who have gone above and beyond in their contributions to She Writes in our first six months. Part One took us through the end of September -- here are the highlights from October, November and January. Please feel free to use this as your guide, or to consult the book-cover-slider on the main page of She Writes, which as 250 books in it published by She Writers in 2009.


Monica Holloway, Cowboy and Wills. Monica contributed a lively, wonderful "It's My Pub Date" post to She Writes this fall.

Amy Ferris, Marrying George Clooney: Confessions of a Midlife Crisis, and Amy Friedman, Tell Me A Story. The exchange between these two is inspiring, funny and very moving. Don't miss the Five Questions For Amy Ferris post that ran in early October of this year.

Victoria Rosner, Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life. I loved Victoria's piece for She Writes about giving Percy Shelley co-author credit on Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein, "Co-Creating A Monster,". How many wives get co-author credits on their husbands books? Hmm...

Renate Stendahl, Gertrude Stein, In Words and Pictures. One of my favorite treats over the last few months has been Renate's blog for She Writes "Why Do Something If It Can Be Done: Quoting Gertrude Stein." The arresting images she has shared are truly unforgettable.


Jennifer Dinn Korman, Waltzing Jimmy Jackboy. Jen took a bold route to publishing Waltzing Jimmy Jackboy, starting her own press and becoming her own publisher. Thank you to Jen for her post "Becoming Your Own Publisher" and for starting the very active Small Publishers and Independent Authors Group.

Alison Piepmeier, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, and Heather Hewett, Mothering in the Third Wave. Alison and Heather both blogged for She Writes from this year's NWSA conference. Heather had some great recommendations for books to buy by women in 2009.

Molly O'Neill, Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball, and Alicia Anstead, another of our "Five Question for" pairs who shared their conversation with all of us at She Writes.

Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project. Gretchen has graciously, super-humanly agreed to take over our Countdown to Publication blog until the Happiness Project comes out -- only days from now, but available TODAY for preorder! :)

Ramola D, Temporary Lives. Ramola D graciously accepted my invitation to travel from Washington D.C. to speak to a Girls Write Now workshop last weekend, and posted a call to our community to help her donate books to the girls.

Marci Alboher, One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success, and Jessica DuLong, My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson. Marci shared highlights of the Q&A she did with Jessica for Shine on She Writes.

Maggie Gee, My Driver. Elaine Showalter asked Five Questions of the inimitable UK novelist Maggie Gee.

Jaclyn Friedman, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. (Jaclyn co-authored Yes Means Yes with Jessica Valenti.) Jaclyn shared the positively delicious contents of the WAM auction here on She Writes -- I didn't win anything, but that's ok.

DAY OF ACTION.
We had so many voices represented on our last Day of Action, in response to PW's all-male Top Ten Books List. Thank you to all of the women who made their voices, and their lists, heard on She Writes:

Lizzie Skurnick, Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading.
Katha Pollitt and Miriam Peskowitz (whose books I mentioned in my Part One post)
Meg Waite Clayton, The Wednesday Sisters.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker, The Book of Seventy.
Cate Marvin, Fragment of the Head of a Queen: Poems.
Erin Belieu, Black Box.

Elizabeth Gold, wrote one of my favorite posts of the day, "The High Fidelity Factor, or Why List?"

Huge thanks also to Maya Nussbaum, founder of Girls Write Now, who gave us her own Best Books of 2009 list drawn from the GWN community, and to Jean Casella, who created one of everybody's favorite lists that day, "Lost (and Found) in Translation: Top Ten Books by International Wo...

Sarah Glazer, who has written a series of excellent articles for She Writes about the publishing world, created a list too: "Anything They Can Do We Can Do Better."

LaTonya answered my call for lists that featured more women of color with the thoughtful and helpful post "Don't Dismiss YA! Top Ten YA Books Written By Women of Color," a terrific holiday-buying guide.

And much love to Lea Beresford for her illuminating and helpful "Ask An Editor Column" over these last months.

LOOKING FOR A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY SHE WRITERS SINCE OUR LAUNCH?
Look no further than Member News. There's a heck of a lot of it, but we like it that way.

Now go create your Holiday Book Buying Guide, and go buy lots of books written by women -- and preferably one or two by fellow She Writers -- as gifts today! And then tell us all about it.

Warm best, and more soon,
Kamy