Join my list to receive a free copy of  Transgressive Writing Essentials A Starter Guide, plus exclusive updates and more.

This article explores female archetypes in literature (the witch, femme fatale, martyr, and warrior) and how they reflect both resistance and patriarchal fear. Through six subversive strategies and examples from the author’s works (Bella Donna, Us, Women, Counting Crows, Red Wings), it advocates for complex, layered portrayals of women that challenge reductive tropes and reimagine archetypes as sites of narrative and political transformation.

An exploration of how feminist literature transforms female rage into a narrative engine—examining its structural, political, and aesthetic functions in stories by and about women.

Neda Aria: Quarterly Releases & Works in Progress – Summer 2025 Us, Women is out now—an intimate, lyrical novella on friendship, rage, and desire. Counting Crows (with Aaron Paul Schaut) and its companion Lover’s Rock are now both available. Coming soon: Red Wings, book one of the Lust in Paris trilogy, to be published by Outcast Press. A season of reflection, release, and raw emotion—thank you for reading and staying with the work.

Female desire in fiction isn’t always soft, safe, or empowering—and that’s exactly the point. From Lust in Paris to Animal and Adèle, feminist literature is reclaiming eroticism as power, not performance. These stories explore messy, dangerous, and unapologetic female desire, challenging the sanitized norms of sexuality in fiction. Let women want. Let them burn. Let their longing disrupt the page—and everything it touches.

Transgressive feminist literature doesn’t seek approval. It doesn’t heal, uplift, or behave. Instead, it dives into rage, obsession, madness, and sexual power—without apology. From Medea to Moshfegh, this mode of writing centers women as complex, carnal, cruel, and unsanitized. This isn't about empowerment through perfection—it's about the freedom to be unlikable, unreadable, and unforgettable. Here's a deep dive into its history.

Long before feminism had a name, women were writing it. From Margery Kempe’s unruly confessions to Táhirih’s revolutionary poetry in Qajar Iran, female voices across the globe defied silence. Nana Asma’u educated women in 19th-century Nigeria, Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya penned mystic verse in 8th-century Iraq, and Sor Juana challenged patriarchy with poetry. These weren’t footnotes in history—they were its uncredited authors.