The Women's L Project Blog

Achy Obejas

Achy Obejas, born in 1956 in Cuba, left her homeland with her family as an exile when she was six years old. Raised in Michigan City, Indiana, Obejas completed undergraduate...

Nancy García Loza

Nancy García Loza

Nancy García Loza born in 1984 is the daughter of parents who came to the Chicago area from Jalisco, Mexico. A self-taught playwright, she writes from her own experience and...

Betty White

Betty White (1922-2021) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the daughter of a lighting company executive and a homemaker, but spent most of her of her formative years growing up...

Harriette Robinet

Harriette Robinet

The granddaughter of a slave owned by General Robert E. Lee, Harriette Robinet (born 1931) grew up in Washington, D.C. After graduating from the College of New Rochelle, she earned...

Tobey Prinz

Tobey Prinz (1911-1984) was a woman of action. Former Cook County Clerk David Orr described her as a “whirlwind, this tornado of a woman.” She walked the picket lines and...

Rebecca Gilman

Rebecca Gilman, born in 1964 and raised in Trussville, Alabama, studied writing at Middlebury College and Birmingham-Southern College. She then attended the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa,...

Mary Wallace

For three years native Chicagoan Mary Wallace (born 1952) tried to get into the training program to become a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus driver. Time after time, she was...

Gale Cincotta

Gale Cincotta (1929-2001) was born in Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood, the daughter of immigrants. She and her husband, a gas station owner, and their five sons moved to the Austin neighborhood...

Nancy Jefferson

Nancy Jefferson

Nancy Jefferson (1923-1992), the daughter of a Tennessee sharecropper, studied education and library science at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. She moved north to Chicago in search of...

Mary Bartelme

Mary Bartelme (1866-1954) grew up in what is now known as Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood but at the time was home to new immigrants like her parents. After graduating from...

Salima Rivera

Salima Rivera (1946-2004) and her parents came to the US mainland from Puerto Rico when she was and infant, briefly living in Utah but then moving to Chicago. For the...

Ellen Gates Starr

Ellen Gates Starr

Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940) was born in Laona Townsip, Illinois and attended nearby Rockford Female Seminary. Although she could only study there for just one year (due to financial constraints),...

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